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WORKS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



"Such is the beauty of his speech, such the majesty of his 
ideas, such the power of the moral sentiment in men, and such 
the impression which his whole character makes on them, that 
they lend him, everywhere, their ears, and thousands bless his 
manly thoughts." — Massachusetts Quarterly Review. 



ESSAYS. First Series, i vol. i6mo. $2.00. 

ESSAYS. Second Series. 1 vol. i6mo. $2.00. 

MISCELLANIES. Embracing Nature, Addresses, and 
Lectures, i vol. i6mo. $ 2,00. 

REPRESENTATIVE MEN. Seven Lectures, ivol. 
i6mo. $2.00. 

ENGLISH TRAITS, i vol. i6mo. $2.00. 

THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, i vol. i6mo. ^2.00. 



PROSE WORKS Comprising the six preceding volumes. 
2 vols. i2mo. Cloth, ^5.00; Half Calf, ^9.00; Morocco, 
$12.00. 

SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE, i vol. i6rao. $2.00. 
LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS, i vol. i6mo. $2.00. 
POEMS. I vol. i6mo. With Portrait. $2.00. 
MAY-DAY, and Other Pieces, i vol. i6mo. $2.00. 



PARNASSUS : A volume of Choice Poems, selected from 
the whole range of English Literature, edited by Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. With a Prefatory Essay. Crown 
8vo. Nearly 600 pages. $4.00. 



JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

Publishers, Boston. 



ESSAYS. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



Fix^t Series. 



NEW AND REVISED EDITION. 




BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1876. 



Cl'<^fu^ 



J5. 



]ri^ 



Copyright, 1876. 
By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

UlSTOJlY 9 

SELF-RELIANCE . 41 

Compensation . . . . . . . .77 

Spiritual Laws 105 

Love 135 

Friendship 153 

Prudence 175 

Heroism 193 

The Ovek-Soul 211 

Circles . 237 

Intellect 255 

Art 275 



ESSAYS. 



HISTOEY. 



There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all : 
And where it cometh, all things are ; 
And it cometh everywhere. 



T AM owner of the sphere, 

Of the seven stars and the solar year, 

Of Cpcsar's hand, and Phito's hrain, 

Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspearc's strain. 



HISTORY. 



I TiTEKE is one mind common to all individual men. 

I Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. 
He that is once admitted to the riglit of reason is made 
a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought 
he may think ; what a saint has felt he may feel ; what 
at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. 
Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all 
that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign 
agent. 

Of the worlcs of this mind history is the record. Its 
genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man 
is explicable by nothing less than all his history. With- 
out hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth 
from the beginning to embody every faculty, every 
thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appro- 
priate events. But the thought is always prior to the 
fact ; all the facts of history pre-exist in the mind as 
laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances pre- 
dominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one 
at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. 
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and 
Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded 
already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, king- 



13 HISTORY. 

dom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the appli- 
cations of his manifold spirit to the manifold world. 

This human mind wrote history, and this must read 
it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole 
of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from 
individual experience. There is a relation between the 
hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air 
I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, 
as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred 
millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends 
on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, 
so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the 
ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind 
each individual man is one more incarnation. All its 
properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private 
experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men 
have done, and the crises of his life refer to national 
crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one 
man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to 
another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform 
was once a private opinion, and when it sliall be a private 
opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age. The 
fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be 
credible or intelligible. We as we read must become 
Greeks, Eomans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and ex- 
ecutioner, must fasten these images to some reality in 
our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. 
What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is as much an 
illustration of the mind's powers and deprivations as 
what has befallen us. Each new law and political move- 
ment has meaning for yon. Stand before each of its 



HISTORY. l3 

tablets and say, ' Under this mask did inj Proteus nature 
hide itself.' This remedies the defect of our too great 
nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into per- 
spective : and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance, and 
the water-pot lose their meanness when hung as signs in 
the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat 
in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Cati- 
line. 

It is the universal nature which gives worth to partic- 
ular men and things. Human life as containing this is 
mysterious and inviolable, and we hedge it round with 
penalties and laws. All laws derive hence their ultimate 
reason; all express more or less distinctly some com- 
mand of this supreme, illimitable essence. Property also 
holds of the soul, covers great spiritual facts, and instinct- 
ively we at first hold to it with swords and laws, and wide 
and complex combinations. The obscure consciousness 
of this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of claims ; 
the plea for education, for justice, for charity, the foun- 
dation of friendship and love, and of the heroism and 
grandeur which belong to acts of self-reliance. It is re- 
markable that involuntarily we always read as superior 
beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do 
not in their stateliest pictures, — in the sacerdotal, the 
imperial palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius — 
anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make us feel that we 
intrude, that this is for better men ; but rather is it true, 
that in their grandest strokes we feel most at home. ^All 
that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy 
that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself.^^ We 
sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great 



14 HISTORY. 

discoveries, the great resistances, tlie great prosperities 
of men ; — because there law was enacted, the sea was 
searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for 
its, as we ourselves in that place would have done or ap- 
plauded. 

We have the same interest in condition and character. 
We honor the rich, because they have externally the free- 
dom, power, and grace which we feel to be proper to 
man, proper to us. So all that is said of the wise man 
by Stoic, or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to 
each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but 
attainable self. All literature writes the character of the 
wise man. Books, monuments, pictures, conversation, 
are portraits in which he finds the lineaments he is form- 
ing. The silent and the eloquent praise him and accost 
him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves as by per- 
sonal allusions. A true aspirant, therefore, never needs 
look for allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. 
He hears the commendation, not of himself, but more 
sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word that is 
said concerning character, yea, further, in every fact and 
circumstance, — in the running river and the rustling 
corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows from 
mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the 
firmament. 

These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, 
let us use in broad day. The student is to read history 
actively and not passively ; to esteem his own life the 
text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the 
Muse of history will utter oracles, as never to those who 
do not respect themselves. I have no expectation that 



HISTORY. 15 

any man will read history aright, who thinks that what 
w^as done in a remote age, by men whose names have re- 
sounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing 
to-day. 

^ The world exists for the education of each man. Tiiere 
is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, 
to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. 
Everything tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate 
itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see 
that he can live all history in his own person. He must 
sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied 
by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all 
the geography and all the government of the world ; he 
must transfer the point of view from which history is 
commonly read, from E.ome and Athens and London to 
liimself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, 
and if England or Egypt have anything to say to him, 
he will try the case ; if not, let them forever be silent. 
He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts 
yield tlieir secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. 
The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays 
itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of his- 
tory. Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angu- 
larity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to 
keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and 
early Rome have passed or are passing into fiction. 
The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is 
poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what 
the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to 
hang in heaven an immortal sign ? London and Paris 
and New York must go the same way. " What is His- 



16 HISTORY. 

torj/' said Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon ? " This 
life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, 
England, War, Colonization, Church, Court, and Com- 
merce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments 
grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. 
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, 
Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative prin- 
ciple of each and of all eras in my own mind. 

We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of 
history in our private experience, and verifying them 
here. All history becomes subjective; -in other words, 
there is properly no history, only biography. Every 
mind must know the whole lesson for itself, — must go 
over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it 
does not live, it will not know. What the former age 
has epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular con- 
venience, it will lose all the good of verifying for itself, 
by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere, some- 
time, it will demand and find compensation for that loss 
by doing the work itself. Eerguson discovered many 
things in astronomy which had long been known. The 
better for him. 

History must be this or it is nothing. Every law 
which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature ; 
that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary 
reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. 
So stand before every public and private work ; before 
an oration of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, before 
a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of Marma- 
duke Robinson, before a Erench Eeign of Terror, and a 
Salem hanging of witches, before a fanatic Revival, and 



HISTORY. 17 

the Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We 
assume tliat we under like influence should be alike 
affected, and should achieve the Uke; and we aim to 
master intellectually the steps, and reach the same height 
or the same degradation, that our fellow, our proxy, has 
done. 

All inquiry into antiquity — all curiosity respecting the 
Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Cir- 
cles, Mexico, Mempliis — is the desire to do away this 
Avild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and in- 
troduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni 
digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of 
Tliebes, until he can see the end of tlie difference be- 
tween the monstrous work and himself. When he has 
satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was 
made by such a person as he, so armed and so motived, 
and to ends to which he himself should also have worked, 
the problem is solved ; his thought Ka^cs along the whole 
line of temples and sphinxes and catacombs, passes 
through them all with satisfaction, and they live again to 
the mind, or are now. 

A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us, and 
not done by us. Surely it was by man, but we find it not 
in our man. But we apply ourselves to the history of 
its production. We put ourselves into the place and 
state of the builder. We remember the forest-dwellers, 
the first temples, the adherence to the first type, and the 
decoration of it as the wealth of the nation increased; 
the value which is given to wood by carving led to the 
carving over the whole mountain of stone of a cathedral. 
When we have gone through this process, and added 

B 



18 HISTORY. 

thereto tlie Catholic Church, its cross, its music, its pro- 
cessions, its Saints' days and image-worship, we have, as 
it were, been the man that made the minster ; we have 
seen how it could and must be. We have the sufficient 
reason. 

The difference between men is in their principle of 
association. Some men classify objects by color and size 
and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic 
likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. / The pro- 
gress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, 
which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the 
philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and 
sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. 
Eor the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circum- 
stance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every 
animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the 
variety of appearance. 

Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creat- 
ing nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why 
should we be such hard pedants, and magnify a few 
forms ? Why should we make account of time, or of 
magnitude, or of figure ? Tlie soul knows them not, and 
genius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them as 
a young child plays with graybeards and in churches. 
Genius studies the causal thought, and far back, in the 
womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that 
diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. Genius 
watches the monad through all his masks as he performs 
the metempsychosis of nature. Genius detects through 
the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through 
the egg, the constant individual ; through countless indi- 



HISTORY. 19 

viduals, the fixed species; through many species, the 
genus ; througli all genera, the steadfast type ; through 
all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. 
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never 
the same. She casts the same thought into troops of 
forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. 
Through the bruteness and toughness of matter, a subtle 
spirit bends all things to its own will.v The adamant 
streams into soft but precise form before it, and whilst 
I look at it, its outline and texture are changed again. 
Nothing is so fleeting as form ; yet never does it quite 
deny itself. In man we still trace the remains or hints 
of all that we esteem badges of servitude in the lower 
races ; yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace ; 
as lo, in ^schylus, transformed to a cow, offends the 
imagination ; but how changed, when as Isis in Egypt 
she meets Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman, with nothing 
of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the 
splendid ornament of her brows! 

The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diver- 
sity equally obvious. ' There is at the surface infinite 
variety of things; at the centre there is simplicity of 
cause. How many are the acts of one man in which we 
recognize the same character ! Observe the sources of 
our information in respect to the Greek genius. We 
have the civil history of that people, as Herodotus, Thu- 
cydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch have given it ; a very 
sufficient account of what manner of persons they were, 
and what they did. We have the same national mind 
expressed for us again in their literature, in epic and 
lyric poems, drama, and philosophy; a very complete 



20 HISTORY. 

form. Tlieii we have it once more in tlieir architecture, a 
beauty as of temperance itself, limited to the straight line 
and the square, — a builded geometry. Then we have it 
once again in sculpture, the " tongue on the balance of 
expression/' a multitude of forms in the utmost freedom 
of action, and never transgressing the ideal serenity ; 
like votaries performing some religious dance before the 
gods, and, though in convulsive pain or mortal combat, 
never daring to break the figure and decorum of their 
dance. Thus, of the genius of one remarkable people, 
we have a fourfold representation: and to the senses 
what more unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble cen- 
taur, the peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions 
of Phocion? 

Every one must have observed faces and forms wliich, 
without any resembling feature, make a like impression 
on the beholder. A particular picture or copy of verses, 
if it do not awaken the same train of images, will yet 
superinduce the same sentiment as some wild mountain 
walk, although the resemblance is nowise obvious to the 
senses, but is occult and out of tlie reach of the under- 
standing. ^ Nature is an endless combination and repeti- 
tion of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known 
air through innumerable variations. 

Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout 
her works ; and delights in startling us with resemblances 
in the most unexpected quarters. I have seen the head 
of an old sachem of the forest, which at once reminded 
the eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of 
the brow suggested the strata of the rock. There are 
men whose manners have the same essential splendor as 



HISTOUY. 21 

the simple and awful sculpture on tlie friezes of the Par- 
thenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art. And 
there are compositions of the same strain to be found 
in the books of all ages. What is Guido's Eospigliosi 
Aurora but a morning thought, as the horses in it are 
only a morning cloud ? If any one will but take pains 
to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally 
inclined in certain moods of mind, and those to which he 
is averse, he will see how deep is the chain of affinity. 

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree with- 
out in some sort becoming a tree ; or draw a cjiild by 
studying the outlines of its form merely, — but, by 
watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter 
enters into his nature, and can then draw him at will in 
every attitude. So Roos " entered into the inmost na- 
ture of a sheep." I knew a draughtsman employed in 
a public survey, who found that he could not sketch the 
rocks until their geological structure was first explained 
to him. In a certain state of thought is the common 
origin of very diverse works. It is the spirit and not 
the fact that is identical. By a deeper apprehension, 
and not primarily by a painful acquisition of many man- 
ual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening 
other souls to a given activity. 

It has been said, that " common souls pay with what 
they do ; nobler souls with that which they are." And 
why ? Because a profound nature awakens in us by its 
actions and words, by its very looks and manners, the 
same power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture, or of 
pictures, addresses. 

Civil and natural history, the history of art and of lit- 



23 HISTORY. 

erature, must be explained from individual history, or 
must remain words. There is no. ag but is related to 
us, nothing that does not interest us, — kingdom, college, 
tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all things are in 
man. Santa Croce and the dome of St. Peter's are 
lame copies after a divine model. Strasburg Cathedral 
is a material counterpart of the soul of Erwin of Stein- 
bach. The true poem is the poet's mind ; the true ship 
is the shipbuilder. In the man, could we lay him open, 
we should see the reason for the last flourish and tendril 
of his work ; as every spine and tint in the sea-shell pre- 
exist in the secreting organs of the fish. The whole of 
heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine 
manners shall pronounce your name with all the orna- 
ment that titles of nobility could ever add. 

The trivial experience of every day is always verifying 
some old prediction to us, and converting into things the 
words and signs which we had heard and seen without 
heed. A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, 
said to me, that the woods always seemed to her to wait, 
as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds 
until the wayfarer has passed onward : a thought which 
poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which 
breaks off on the approach of human feet. The man 
who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at 
midnight has been present like an archangel at the crea- 
tion of light and of the world. I remember one summer 
day, in the fields, my companion pointed out to me 
a broad cloud, which might extend a quarter of a mile 
parallel to the horizon, quite accurately in the form of 
a cherub as painted over churches, — a round block in 



HISTORY. 23 

the centre, which it was easy to animate with eyes and 
mouth, supported (ji. either side by wide-stretched sym- 
metrical wings. What appears once in the atmosphere 
may appear often, and it was undoubtedly the archetype 
of that familiar ornament. I have seen in the sky a chain 
of summer lightning which at once showed to me that 
the Greeks drew from nature when they painted the 
thunderbolt in the iiand of Jove. I have seen a snow- 
drift along the sides of the stone-wall which obviously 
gave the idea of the common architectural scroll to abut 
a tower. 

By surrounding ourselves with the original circum- 
stances, we invent anew the orders and the ornaments 
of architecture, as we see how each people merely deco- 
rated its primitive abodes. The Doric temple preserves 
the semblance of the wooden cabin in which the Dorian 
dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. 
The Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds 
and subterranean houses of their forefathers. " The cus- 
tom of making houses and tombs in the living rock," 
says Heeren, in his researches on the Ethiopians, " deter- 
mined very naturally the principal character of the Nu- 
bian Egyptian architecture to the colossal form which it 
assumed. In these caverns, already prepared by nature, 
the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge shapes and 
masses, so that when art came to the assistance of na- 
ture, it could not move on a small scale without degrad- 
ing itself. What would statues of the usual size, or neat 
porches and wings have been, associated with those gigan- 
tic halls befoi-e which only Colossi could sit as watchmen, 
or lean on the pillars of the interior? " 



24 HISTOE.Y. 

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adapta- 
tion of the forest trees with all their boughs to a festal 
or solemn arcade, as the bands about the cleft pillars still 
indicate the green withes that tied them. No one can 
walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being 
struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, 
especially in winter, when the barrenness of all other 
trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the woods 
in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of 
the stained glass window, with which the Gothic cathe- 
drals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen 
through the bare and crossing branches of the forest. 
Nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Ox- 
ford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the 
forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that 
his chisel, his saw, and plane still reproduced its ferns, 
its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir, and 
spruce. 

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued 
by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The moun- 
tain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the 
lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial propor- 
tions and perspective, of vegetable beauty. 

In like manner, all public facts are to be individual- 
ized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then at 
once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep 
and sublime. As the Persian imitated in the slender 
shafts and capitals of his architecture the stem and flower 
of the lotus and palm, so the Persian court in its mag- 
nificent era never gave over the nomadism of its barba- 
rous tribes, but travelled from Ecbatana, where the spring 



HISTOHY. 25 

was spent, to Susa in summer, and to Babylon for tlie 
winter. 

In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism 
and Agriculture are the two antagonist facts. The geog- 
raphy of Asia and of Africa necessitated a nomadic life. 
But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the 
soil, or the advantages of a market, had induced to build 
towns. Agriculture, therefore, was a religious injunc- 
tion, because of the perils of the state from nomadism. 
And in these late and civil countries of England and 
America, these propensities still fight out the old battle 
in the nation and in the individual. The nomads of 
Africa were constrained to wander by the attacks of the 
gadfly, which drives the cattle mad, and so compels tlie 
tribe to emigrate in the rainy season, and to drive off the 
cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia 
follow the pasturage from month to month. In America 
and Europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity ; a 
progress, certainly, from the gadfly of Astaboras to the 
Anglo and Italomania of Boston Bay. Sacred cities, to 
which a periodical religious pilgrimage was enjoined, or 
stringent laws and customs, tending to invigorate the 
national bond, were the check on the old rovers; and 
the cumulative values of long residence are the restraints 
on the itineracy of the present day. The antagonism of 
the two tendencies is not less active in individuals, as 
Ihe love of adventure or the love of repose happens to 
predominate. A man of rude health and flowing spirits 
has the faculty of rapid domestication, lives in his wagon, 
and roams through all latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. 
At sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as 

VOL. I. 2 



26 HISTOEY. 

warm, dines with as good appetite, and associates as 
liappily, as beside his own chimneys. Or perhaps his 
faciUty is deeper seated, in the increased range of his 
faculties of observation, which yield him points of inter- 
est wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The pastoral 
nations were needy and hungry to desperation ; and this 
intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind, 
through the dissipation of power on a miscellany of ob- 
jects. The home-keeping wit, on the other hand, is that 
continence or content which finds all the elements of life 
in its own soil ; and which has its own perils of monot- 
ony and deterioration, if not stimulated by foreign infu- 
sions. 

Everything the individual sees without him corre- 
sponds to his states of mind, and everything is in turn 
intelligible to him, as liis onward thinking leads him into 
the truth to which that fact or series belongs. 

The primeval world, — the Fore- Wo rid, as the Ger- 
mans say, — I can dive to it in myself as well as grope 
for it witli researching fingers in catacombs, libraries, 
and the broken reliefs and torsos of ruined villas. 

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in 
Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, 
from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic 
life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries 
later ? What but this, that every man passes personally 
through a Grecian period. The Grecian state is the era 
of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, — of 
the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the 
body. In it existed those human forms which supplied 
the sculptor with his models of Hercules, Phoebus, and 



HISTORY. 27 

Jove ; not like tlie forms abounding in the streets of 
modern cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of fea- 
tures, but composed of incorrupt, sharply defined, and 
symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets are so formed 
that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint, and 
take furtive glances on this side and on that, but they 
must turn the whole head. The manners of that period 
are plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for per- 
sonal qualities, courage, address, self-command, justice, 
strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Lux- 
ury and elegance are not known. A sparse population 
and want make every man his own valet, cook, butcher, 
and soldier, and the habit of supplying his own needs 
educates the body to wonderful performances. Such are 
the Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far dif- 
ferent is the picture Xenophon gives of himself and his 
compatriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. " Af- 
ter the army had crossed the river Teleboas in Armenia, 
tliere fell much snow, and the troops lay miserably on 
the ground covered with it. But Xenophon arose naked, 
and, taking an axe, began to split wood ; whereupon 
others rose and did the like." Throughout his army 
exists a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel for 
plunder, they wrangle with the generals on each new 
order, and Xenophon is as sharp -tongued as any, and 
sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as good as he 
gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great 
boys, with such a code of honor and such lax discipline 
as great boys have ? 

The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of 
all the old literature, is, that the persons speak simply, — 



28 HISTORY. 

speak as persons wlio have great good sense without 
knowing it, before yet the reflective habit has become the 
predominant habit of the mind. Our admiration of the 
antique is not admiration of the okl, but of the natural. 
The Greeks are not reflective, but perfect in their senses 
and in their liealth, with the finest physical organization 
in the world. Adults acted with the simplicity and grace 
of children. They made vases, tragedies, and statues, 
such as healthy senses should, — that is, in good taste. 
Such thhigs have continued to be made in all ages, and 
are now, wherever a healthy physique exists ; but as a 
class, from their superior organization, they have sur- 
passed all. They combine the energy of manhood with 
the engaging unconsciousness of childhood. The attrac- 
tion of these manners is that they belong to man, and are 
known to every man in virtue of his being once a child ; 
besides that there are always individuals who retain these 
characteristics. A person of childlike genius and inborn 
energy is still a Greek, and revives our love of the Muse 
of Hellas. I admire the love of nature in the Philoctetes. 
In reading those fine apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, 
rocks, mountains, and waves, I feel time passing away as 
an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of 
his thought. The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow- 
beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his 
heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted 
distinction between Greek and English, between Classic 
and Romantic schools, seems superficial and pedantic. 
When a thought of Plato bscomes a thought to me, — 
when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, 
tiuie is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a per- 



HISTORY. 29 

ceptioii, tliat our two souls are tinged with the same hue^ 
and do, as it were, run into one, why should I measure 
degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years ? 

The student interprets the age of chivalry by his own. 
age of chivalry, and the days of maritime adventure and 
circumnavigation by quite parallel miniature experiences 
of his own. To the sacred history of the world, he has 
the same key. When the voice of a prophet out of the 
deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a sentiment of 
his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the 
truth through all the confusion of tradition and the cari- 
cature of institutions. 

Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who 
disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of 
God have, from time to time, walked among men and 
made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the 
commonest hearer. Hence, evidently, the tripod, the 
priest, the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. 

Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They 
cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with them- 
selves. As they come to revere their intuitions and 
aspire to live holil}^, their own piety explains every fact, 
every word. 

How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, 
of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind. 
I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are mine as 
much as theirs. 

I have seen the first monks and anchorets without 
crossing seas or centuries. More than once some indi- 
vidual has appeared to me with such negligence of labor 
and such commanding contemplation, a haughty benefi- 



30 HISTORY. 

ciary, begging in tlie name of God, as made good to the 
nineteenth century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and 
the first Capuchins. 

The priestcraft of the East and West, of the Magian, 
Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is expounded in the individ- 
ual's private life. The cramping influence of a hard for- 
malist on a young child in repressing his spirits and 
courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without 
producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and 
even much sympathy with the tyranny, — is a familiar 
fact explained to the child when he becomes a man, only 
by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a 
child tyrannized over by those names and words and 
forms, of whose influence he was merely the organ to 
the youth. The fact teaches him how Belus was wor- 
sliipped, and how the Pyramids were built, better than 
the discovery by Champollion of the names of all the 
workmen and the cost of every tile. He finds Assyria 
and the Mounds of Cholula at his door, and himself has 
laid the courses. 

Again, in that protest which each considerate person 
makes against the superstition of his times, he repeats 
step for step the part of old reformers, and in the search 
after truth finds like them new perils to virtue. He 
learns again what moral vigor is needed to supply the 
girdle of EC superstition. A great licentiousness treads 
on the heels of a reformation. How many times in the 
liistory of the world has the Luther of the day had to 
lament the decay of piety in his own household ! " Doc- 
tor," said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, " how is 
it that, whilst subject to papacy, we prayed so often and 



HISTORY. 31 

with sucli fervor, whilst now we pray with the utmost 
coldness and very seldom?'^ 

The advancing man discovers how deep a property he 
has in literature, — in all fable as well as in all history. 
He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described 
strange and impossible situations, but that universal man 
wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for 
all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonder- 
fully intelhgible to him, dotted down before he was born. 
One after another he comes up in his private adventures 
with every fable of ^sop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, 
of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his own head 
and hands. 

The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper crea- 
tions of the imagination and not of the fancy, are uni- 
versal verities. What a range of meanings and what 
perpetual pertinence has the story of Prometheus ! Be- 
side its primary value as the first chapter of the history 
of Europe (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, 
the invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of 
colonies), it gives the history of religion with some close- 
ness to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is the Jesus 
of the old mythology. He is the friend of man ; stands 
between the unjust "justice" of the Eternal Eather and 
the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their 
account. But where it departs from the Calvinistic Chris- 
tianity, and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it repre- 
sents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the 
doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, objective form, 
and which seems the self-defence of man against this 
untruth, namely, a discontent with the believed fact that 



S'Z HISTOllY. 

a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of rever- 
ence is onerons. It would steal, if it could, the fire of 
the Creator, and live apart from him, and independent of 
him. The Prometheus Vinctus is the romance of scep- 
ticism. Not less true to all time are the details of that 
stately apologue. Apollo kept the flocks of Admetus, 
said the poets. When the gods come among men, thej 
are not known. Jesus was not ; Socrates and Shak- 
speare were not. Antseus was suffocated by the gripe of 
Hercules, but every time he touched his mother earth, 
liis strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and, 
in all his weakness, both his body and his mind are in- 
vigorated by habits of conversation with nature. The 
power of music, the power of poetry to unfix, and, as it 
were, clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle 
of Orpheus. The philosophical perception of identity 
through endless mutations of form makes him know the 
Proteus. What else am I who laughed or wept yester- 
day, who slept last night like a corpse, and this morn- 
ing stood and ran ? And what see I on any side but 
the transmigrations of Proteus ? I can symbolize my 
thought by using the name of any creature, of any fact, 
because every creature is man agent or patient. Tan- 
talus is but a name for you and me. Tantalus means the 
impossibility of drinking the waters of thought which are 
always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. 
The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it 
were ; but men and women are only half human. Ev- 
ery animal of the barn-yard, the field, and the forest, of 
the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, 
has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of 



HISTORY. 33 

its features and form in some one or other of these up- 
right, heaven-facing speakers. Ah ! brother, stop the 
ebb of thy soul, — ebbing downward into the forms into 
whose habits thou hast now for many years sUd. As 
near and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, 
who was said to sit in the roadside and put riddles to 
every passenger. If the man could not answer, she 
swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the 
Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight 
of winged facts or events ! In splendid variety these 
changes come, all putting questions to the human spirit. 
Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom 
these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts en- 
cumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of 
routine the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to 
facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which 
man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better 
instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, 
as one that comes of a higher race, remains fast by the 
soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and 
supple into their places ; they know their master, and 
the meanest of them glorifies him. 

See in Goethe's Helena the same desire that every 
word should be a thing. These figures, he would say, 
tliese Chirons, Griffins, Phorkyas, Helen, and Leda, are 
somewhat, and do exert a specific influence on the mind. 
So far then are they eterjial entities, as real to-day as 
in the first Olympiad. Much revolving them, he writes 
out freely his humor, and gives them body to his own 
imagination. And although that poem be as vague and 
fantastic as a dream, j^et is it much more attractive than 
2* c 



34 HISTORY. 

tlie more regular dramatic pieces of tlie same author, for 
the reason that it operates a wonderful relief to the 
mind from the routine of customary images, — awakens 
the reader's invention and fancy by the wild freedom of 
the design, and by the unceasing succession of brisk 
shocks of surprise. 

Tlie universal nature, too strong for the petty nature 
of the bard, sits on his neck and writes through his 
hand ; so that when he seems to vent a mere caprice 
and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence 
Plato said that " poets utter great and wise things which 
they do not themselves understand." All the fictions of 
the Middle Age explain themselves as a masked or frolic 
expression of that which in grave earnest the mind of 
that period toiled to achieve. Magic, and all that is 
ascribed to it, is a deep presentiment of the powers of 
science. The shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, 
the power of subduing the elements, of using the secret 
virtues of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, 
are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction. 
The preternatural prowess of the hero, the gift of per- 
petual youth, and the like, are alike the endeavor of the 
human spirit " to bend the shows of things to the desires 
of the mind." 

In Perceforest and Amadis de Gaul, a garland and a 
rose bloom on the head of her who is faithful, and fade 
on the brow of the inconstant. In the story of the Boy 
and the Mantle, even a mature reader may be surprised 
with a glow of virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the 
gentle Genelas ; and, indeed, all the postulates of elfin 
annals, — that the fairies do not like to be named ; that 



HISTOHY. ' 35 

tlieir gifts are capricious and not to "be trusted ; that who 
seeks a treasure must not speak ; and the like, — I find 
true in Concord, however they might be in Cornwall or 
Bretagne. 

Is it otherwise in the newest romance ? I read the 
Bride of Lammermoor. Sir William Ashton is a mask 
for a vulgar temptation, Havenswood Castle a fine name 
for proud poverty, and the foreign mission of state only 
a Bunyan disguised for lionest industry. We may all 
shoot a wild bull that would toss the good and beautiful, 
by fighting down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ashton 
is another name for fidelity, which is always beautiful 
and always liable to calamity in this world. 

But along with the civil and metaphysical history of 
man, another history goes daily forward, — that of the 
external world, — in which he is not less strictly impli- 
cated. He is the compend of time ; he is also the cor- 
relative of nature. His power consists in the multitude 
of his aflSnities, in the fact that his life is intertwined 
with the whole chain of organic and inorganic being. lu 
old Rome the public roads beginning at the Forum pro- 
ceeded north, south, east, west, to the centre of every 
province of the empire, making each market-town of 
Persia, Spain, and Britain pervious to the soldiers of the 
capital : so out of the human heart go, as it were, high- 
ways to the heart of every object in nature, to reduce 
it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of 
relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is 
the world. His faculties refer to natures out of him, 
and predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the 



36 HISTORY. 

iish foresliow that water exists, or the wings of an eagle 
in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a 
world. Put Napoleon in an island prison, let his facul- 
ties find no men to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to 
play for, and he would beat the air and appear stupid. 
Transport him to large countries, dense population, com- 
plex interests, and antagonist power, and you shall see 
that the man Napoleon, bounded, that is, by such a pro- 
file and outline, is not the virtual Napoleon. Tiiis is but 
Talbot's shadow ; 

" His substance is not here : 

For what you see is but the smallest part 

And least proportion of humanity ; 

But were the whole frame here, 

It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 

Your roof were not sufficient to contain it." 

Henry VI. 

Columbus needs a planet to shape his course upon. 
Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages and thick- 
strewn celestial areas. One may say a gravitating solar 
system is already prophesied in the nature of Newton's 
mind. Not less does the brain of Davy or of Gay- 
Lussac, from childhood exploring the affinities and re- 
pulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of organization. 
Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light? 
the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic 
sound ? Do not the constructive fingers of Watt, Eul- 
ton, Whittemore, Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, 
and temperable texture of metals, the properties of stone, 
water, and wood ? Do not the lovely attributes of the 
maiden child predict the refinements and decorations of 



HISTOEY. 37 

civil society? Here also we are reminded of the action 
of man on man. A mind might ponder its thought for 
ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion 
of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself 
before he has been thrilled with indignation at an out- 
rage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the 
til rob of thousands in a national exultation or alarm ? 
'No man can antedate his experience, or guess what fac- 
ulty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than 
he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall 
see to-morrow for the first time.-- 

I will not now go behind the general statement to ex- 
plore the reason of this correspondency. Let it suffice 
that in the light of these two facts, namely, I hat the mind 
is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be 
read and written. 

Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and repro- 
duce its treasures for each pupil. He, too, shall pass 
through the whole cycle of experience. He shall collect 
into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall 
be a dull book. It sliall walk incarnate in every just 
and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and 
titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You 
shall make me feel what periods you have lived. A man 
shall be the Temple of Tame. He shall walk, as the 
poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all 
over with wonderful events and experiences ; his own 
form and features by their exalted intelligence shall be 
that variegated vest. I shall find in him the Tore- 
world ; in his childhood the Age of Gold ; the Apples of 
Knowledge ; the Argonautic Expedition ; the calling of 



38 HISTORY. 

Abraham ; the building of tlie Temple ; the Advent of 
Christ ; Dark Ages ; the Revival of Letters ; the Refor- 
mation ; the discovery of new lands ; the opening of 
new sciences, and new regions in man. He shall be the 
priest of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages 
the blessing of the morning stars and all the recorded 
benefits of heaven and earth. 

Is there somewhat overweening in this claim ? Then 
I reject all I have written, for what is the use of pretend- 
ing to know what we know not ? But it is the fault of 
our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact with- 
out seeming to belie some other. I hold our actual 
knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see 
the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen 
on the log. What do I know sympathetically, morally, 
of either of these worlds of life ? As old as the Cau- 
casian man, — perhaps older, — these creatures have 
kept their counsel beside him, and there is no record of 
any word or sign that has passed from one to the other. 
What connection do the books show between the fifty or 
sixty chemical elements and the historical eras ? Nay, 
what does history yet record of the metaphysical annals 
of man ? What light does it shed on those mysteries 
which we hide under the names Death and Immortality ? 
Yet every history should be written in a wisdom which 
divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as 
symbols. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village 
tale our so-called History is. How many times we must 
say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople ! What does 
Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads 
and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being ? 



HISTOEY. 39 

Nay, wliat food or experience or succor liave tliey for 
the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for tlie Kanaka in his canoe, 
for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter ? 

Broader and deeper we must write our annals, — from 
an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, 
ever sanative conscience, — if we would truly express 
our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old 
chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too 
long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines 
in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of let- 
ters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, 
the child, and unschooled farmer's boy stand nearer to 
the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector 
or the antiquary. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 

**Ne te quaesiveris extra." 

" Man is his own star ; and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man, 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill. 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 

Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortunes. 



1 



Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
Suckle him with the she- wolf's teat ; 
"Wintered with the hawk and fox. 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 



I HEAD the other day some verses written by an emi- 
nent painter which were original and not conventional. 
The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let 
the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is 
of more value than any thought they may contain. To 
believe your own thought, to believe that what is true 
for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that 
is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be 
the universal sense ; for the inmost in due time becomes 
the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to 
us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Eamiliar as 
the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we 
ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at 
naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men 
but what they thought. "^A man should learn to detect 
and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his 
mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament 
of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his 
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we 
recognize our own rejected thoughts : they come back to 
us with a certain alienated majesty.- Great works of art 
have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They 
teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with 



44 SELF-EELIANCE. 

good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry 
of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stran- 
ger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we 
have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced 
to take with shame our own opinion from another. 

There is a time in every man's education when he ar- 
rives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imi- 
tation is suicide ; that he must take himself for better, 
for worse, as his portion ; that though the wide universe 
is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to 
him but througli his toil bestowed on that plot of ground 
which is given to him to till. The power which resides 
in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what 
that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has 
tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, 
makes much impression on him, and another none. This 
sculpture in the memory is not without pre-established 
harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should 
fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but 
half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine 
idea which each of us represents. It may be safely 
trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be 
faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made 
manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when 
he has put his heart into his work and done his best ; 
but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him 
no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In 
the attempt his genius deserts him ; no muse befriends ; 
no invention, no hope. 

Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
Accept the place the divine providence has found for 



SELF-EELIANCE. 45 

you, tlie society of your contemporaries, the connection 
of events. Great men have always done so, and confided 
themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betray- 
ing their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was 
seated at their heart, working through their hands, pre- 
dominating in all their being. And we are now men, 
and must accept in the highest mind the same transcend- 
ent destiny ; and not minors and invalids in a protected 
corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but 
guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty 
effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. / 

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in 
the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes ! 
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment 
because our arithmetic has computed the strength and 
means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their 
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and 
when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. In- 
fancy conforms to nobody : all conform to it, so that one 
babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who 
prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and 
puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims 
not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think 
the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you 
and me. Hark ! in the next room his voice is suffi- 
ciently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to 
speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he 
will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, 
and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught 



46 SELF-RELIANCE. 

to conciliate one, is the liealthj attitude of Imman nature. 
A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse ; 
independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner 
on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sen- 
tences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way 
of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, trouble- 
some. He cumbers himself never about consequences, 
about interests ; he gives an independent, genuine ver- 

I diet. You must court him : he does not court you. 
But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his 
consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken 
with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the 
sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections 
must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for 
this. All, that he could pass again into his neutrality ! 
Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, 
observe again from the same unaffected, unbiassed, un- 
bribable, unaif righted innocence, must always be for- 
midable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, 
which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would 
sink hke darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear. 
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but 
they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood 
^^_ of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock 

I, company, in which the members agree, for the better 
Ij/^' securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender 

■ the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most 
request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It 
loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. 

I Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He 



SELF-RELIANCE. 47 

who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered 
bj the name of goodness, but must explore if it be good- 
ness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your 
own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have 
the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer whicli 
when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued 
adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear 
old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have 
1 to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly 
from within ? my friend suggested : " But these impulses 
may be from below, not from above." I replied : ' They 
do not seem to me to be such ; but if I am the Devil's 
child, I will live then from the Devil.' No law can 
be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad 
are but names very readily transferable to that or this ; 
the only right is what is after my constitution, the only 
wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in 
the presence of all opposition, as if everything were titu- 
lar and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think how 
easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large soci- 
eties and dead institutions. Every decent and well- 
spoken individual affects and sways me more than is 
right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak tlie 
rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the 
coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry 
bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and 
comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why 
should I not say to him : ' Go love thy infant ; love thy 
wood-chopper : be good-natured and modest : have that 
grace ; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambi- 
tion with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thou- 



J^)^AJf-i 



48 SELF-EELIANCE. 

sand miles oif. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Hough 
and graceless would be such greeting; but truth is hand- 
somer than the affectation of love." Your goodness must 
have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine 
of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the 
doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun 
father and mother and wife and brother, when mj genius 
calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, 
Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, 
but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect 
me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude com- 
pany. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did 
to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good 
situations. Are they mi/ poor ? I tell thee, thou foolish 
philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the 
cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to 
whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to 
whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold ; for 
them I will go to prison, if need be ; but your miscelr 
laneous popular charities ; the education at college of 
fools ; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to 
-which many now stand ; alms to sots ; and the thousand- 
fold Relief Societies ; — though I confess with shame I 
sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked 
dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to 
withhold. f 

Yirtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the excep- - 
tion than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. 
Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of 
courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in ex- 
piation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works 



SELF-EELIANCE. 49 

are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in 
the AV.orld, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. 
Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, 
but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. 
I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it 
be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering 
and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not 
to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that 
you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to 
his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference 
whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned 
excellent. ^I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where 
I have intrinsic right. Eew and mean as my gifts may 
be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance 
or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the 
people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and 
in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction 
between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, be- 
cause you will always find those who think they know 
what is your duty better than you know it. * It is easy 
in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy 
in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is 
he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect 
sweetness the independence of solitude. 
/ The objection to conforming to usages that have be- 
come dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses 
your time and blurs the impression of your character. \ 
If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead 
Bible society, vote with a great party either for the 
government or against it, spread your table like base 

VOL. I. 3 D 



50 SELF-RELIANCE. 

housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty 
to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so 
much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But 
do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, 
and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must con- 
sider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of conform- 
ity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. 
I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic 
the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. 
Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say 
a new and spontaneous word ? Do I not know that, 
with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the 
institution, he will do no such thing ? Do I not know 
that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, 
— the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish 
minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of 
the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men 
have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, 
and attached themselves to some one of these communi- 
ties of opinion. This conformity makes them not false 
in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all 
particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their 
two is not the real two, their four not the real four ; so 
that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not 
where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is 
not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to 
which w^e adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and 
figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expres- 
sion. There is a mortifying experience in particular, 
which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general 
history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced 



SELF-EELIANCE. 51 

smile which we put on in company where we do not feel 
at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest 
us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved 
by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the out- 
line of the face with the most dis^agreeable sensation. 

Eor non-conformity the w^orld whips you with its dis- 
pleasure. And therefore a man must know how to esti- 
niate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in 
the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversa- 
tion had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, 
lie might well go home with a sad countenance ; but the 
sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have 
no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows 
and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the 
multitude more formidable than that of the senate and 
the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows 
the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. 
Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid 
as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their 
feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, 
when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the 
unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society 
is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magna- 
nimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no 
concernment. 

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is ourl'^^j, 
consistency ; a reverence for our past act or word, be- 
cause the eyes of others have no other data for computing 
our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disap- 
point them. 

But why shauld you keep your head over your shoul- 



52 SELF-EELIANCE. 

der? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest 
you contradict somewhat you have stated m this or that 
public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; 
what then ? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to 
rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure 
memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the 
thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In 
your metaphysics you have denied personality to the 
Deity : yet when the devout motions of the soul come, 
yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe 
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph 
his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds» 
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the 
wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to- 
morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, 
though it contradict everything you said to-day. — " Ah, 
so you shall be sure to be misunderstood?" — Is it so 
bad, then, to be misunderstood ? Pythagoras was mis- 
understood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and 
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and 
wise spirit that ever took flesh. ,To be great is to be 
misunderstood. 

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sal- 
lies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as 
the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant 
in the curve of the sphere.. Nor does it matter how 
you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic 
or Alexandrian stanza ; — read it forward, backward, or 



SELE-RELIANCE. 53 

across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, 
contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record 
day by day my honest thought without prospect or retro- 
spect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, 
though I mean it not and see it not. My book should 
smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The 
swallow over my window should interweave that thread 
or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We 
pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. 
V Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice 
only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice 
emit a breath every moment, v 

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of 
actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. 
Eor of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however 
unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a 
little distance, at a little height of thought. One ten- 
dency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a 
zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a suf- 
ficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average 
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and 
will explain your other genuine actions. Your conform- 
ity explains nothing. Act singl}^, and what you have 
already done singly will justify you now. Greatness 
appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to 
do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right 
before as to defend me now. Be it how" it will, do right 
now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. 
The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone 
days of virtue work their health into this. What makes 
tiie majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field. 



54 SELF-EELIANCE. 

which so fills the imagination ? The consciousness of a 
train of great days and victories behind. They shed an 
united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as 
by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws 
thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washing- 
ton's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is ven- 
erable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always 
ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of 
to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not 
a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, 
self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, 
even if shown in a young person. 
Z' I hope in these days we have heard the last of con- 
formity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and 
ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for din- 
ner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us 
never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming 
to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him ; I wish 
that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for 
liumanity, and though I would make it kind, I would 
make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth 
mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and 
Imrl in the face of custom, and trade, and ofl&ce, the fact 
which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great 
responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man 
works ; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, 
but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. 
He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordina- 
rily, everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or 
of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of 
nothing else ; it takes place of the whole creation. Tiie 



SELF-HELIANCE. 55 

man must be so mucli, that lie must make all circumstan- 
ces indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, 
and an age ; requires infinite spaces and numbers and 
time fully to accomplish his design : — and posterity 
seems to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man 
Csesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Em- 
pire. Christ is born, and milUons of minds so grow and 
cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue 
and the possible of man. An institution is the length- 
ened shadow of one man ; as Monachism, of the Hermit 
Antony ; the Reformation, of Luther ; Quakerism, of 
Eox ; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarksoii. 
Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all 
history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a 
few stout and earnest persons. 

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under 
his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and 
down with the air of a charity -boy, a bastard, or an inter- 
loper, in the world which exists for him. But the man 
in the street, finding no worth in himself which corre- 
sponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured 
a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To 
him a palace, a statue, or a costly book has an alien and 
forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seems to 
say like that, ^ Who are you, sir ? ' Yet they all are his 
suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they 
will come out and take possession. The picture waits for 
my verdict : it is not to command me, but I am to settle 
its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who 
was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the 
duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's 



56 SELF-RELIANCE. 

bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious cere- 
mony like the duke, and assured that he had been iiisaue, 
owes its. popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well 
the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but 
now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds 
himself a true prince. 

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, 
our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, 
power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private 
John and Edward in a small house and common day's 
work ; but the things of life are the same to both ; the 
sum total of both are the same. Why all this deference 
to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus ? Suppose 
they were virtuous ; did they wear out virtue ? As 
great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as fol- 
lowed their public and renowned steps. When private 
men shall act with original views, the lustre Avill be trans- 
ferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have 
so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught 
by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due 
from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men 
have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the 
great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his 
own, make his own scale of men •and things and reverse 
theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, 
and represent the law in his person, was tlie hieroglyphic 
by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of 
their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. 

The magnetism which all original action exerts is ex- 
plained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who 



SELF-HELIANCE. 57 

is tlie Trustee? "What is tlie aboriginal Self, on which 
a universal reliance may be grounded ? What is tlie 
nature and power of that science-baffling star, without 
parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray . 
of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the 
least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads 
us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of vir- 
tue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. 
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all 
later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last 
fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their 
common origin. Tor, the sense of being which in calm 
liours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse 
from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, 
but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same 
source whence their life and being also proceed. We 
first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards 
see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we 
have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action 
and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration 
which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied 
W'ithout impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of im-j i^jyL^ 
mense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth j ■-' 
and organs of its activity. > When we discern justice, 
when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but 
allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence tliis 
comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all 
philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all 
we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the 
voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary percep- 
tions, and knows that to his hivoluntary perceptions 
3* 



58 SELF-HELIANCE. 

a perfect faitli is due. He may err in the expression of 
tliem, but lie knows that these things are so, like day 
and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and 
acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest revery, the 
faintest native emotion, conmiand my curiosity and re- 
spect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the 
statements of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much 
more readily; for, they do not distinguish between per- 
ception and notion. Tiiey fancy that I choose to see 
this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, it is 
fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, 
and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may 
chance that no one has seen it before me. For my per- 
ception of it is as much a fact as the sun. 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It 
must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, 
not one thing, but all things ; should fill the world with 
his voice ; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, 
from the centre of the present thought ; and new date 
and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, 
and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — 
means, teachers, texts, temples, fall ; it lives now, and 
absorbs past and future into the present hour. All 
things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as 
another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their 
cause, and, in tlie universal miracle, petty and particular 
miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know 
and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phrase- 
ology of some old mouldered nation in another country, 
in another world, beheve him not. Is the acorn better 



SELF-EELIANCE. 59 

than the oak which is its fdness and completion ? ' Is 
the parent better than the child into whom he has cast 
his ripened being ? Whence, then, this worship of the 
past?" The centuries are conspirators against the san- 
ity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but 
physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is 
light ; where it is, is day ; where it was, is night ; and 
history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any- 
thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my 
being and becoming. 

Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright ; 
he dares not say, 'I think/ 'I am,' but quotes some 
saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass 
or the blowing rose. These roses under my window 
make no reference to former roses or to better ones ; 
they are for what they are ; they exist with God to-day. 
There is no time to them. There is simply the rose ; 
it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a 
leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts ; in the full-blown 
flower there is no more ; in the leafless root there is no 
less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all 
moments alike. But man postpones or remembers ; he 
does not live in the present, but with reverted eye la- 
ments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround 
him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. * He cannot 
be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the 
present, above time. 

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong 
intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak 
the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, 
or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a 



60 SELF-RELIANCE. 

few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who re- 
peat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, 
as they grow older, of the men of talents and character 
they chance to see, — painfully recollectiug the exact 
words they spoke ; afterAvards, when they come into the 
point of view which those liad who uttered these sayings, 
tliey understand them, and are willing to let the words 
go ; for, at any time, tliey can use words as good when 
occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. 
It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for 
the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, 
we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded 
treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives witli God, 
his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook 
and the rustle of the corn. 

And now at last the highest truth on this subject re- 
mains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; for all that we 
say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That 
thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, 
is this. When good is near you, when you have life in 
yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way ; 
you shall not discern the footprints of any other; you 
shall not see the face of man ; you shall not hear any 
name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly 
strange and new. It shall exclude example and expe- 
rience. You take the way from man, not to man. All 
persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. 
Tear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat 
low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is noth- 
ing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The 
soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal cau- 



SELF-RELIANCE. 61 

satlon, perceives tlie self-existence of Truth and Riglit, 
and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. 
Yast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, 
— long intervals of time, years, centuries, — are of no ac- 
count. This which I think and feel underlay every former 
state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my 
present, and wliat is called life, and what is called death. 

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases 
in the instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of 
transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of 
the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the 
world hates, that the soul becomes ; for that forever de- 
grades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation 
to a shame, confounds the saint Avith the rogue, shoves 
Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate 
of self-reliance ? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there 
w^ill be power not confident but agent. To talk of reli- 
ance is a poor external Avay of speaking. Speak rather 
of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has 
more obedience than I masters me, though he should not 
raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the grav- 
itation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, wiien we speak 
of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is 
Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and 
permeable to principles, by the law of nature must over- 
power and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, 
who are not. 

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on 
this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever- 
blessed One. Self-existence is the attribute of the Su- 
preme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by 



62 SELF-RELIANCE. 

the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. AH 
things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. 
Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, 
personal w^eight, are somewhat, and engage my respect 
as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the 
same law working in nature for conservation and growth. 
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature 
suffers nothing to •remain in her kingdoms which can- 
not help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, 
its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from 
the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and 
vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and 
therefore self-relying soul. 

Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit at 
home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the in- 
truding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a 
simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders 
take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. 
Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our 
own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune 
beside our native riches. 

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe 
of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to 
put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but 
it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other 
men. We must go alone. I like the silent church be- 
fore the service begins, better than any preaching. How 
far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt 
each one with a precinct or sanctuary ! So let us always 
sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or 
wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our 



SELF-llELIANCE. 63 

liearlh, or are said to have the same blood ? All men 
have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will 
I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of 
being ashamed of it. Eiit the isolation must not be 
mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At 
times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to im- 
portune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, 
sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy 
closet door, and say, * Come out unto us.' But keep 
thy state ; come not into their confusion. The power 
men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curi- 
osity. No man can come near me but through my act. 
"What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave 
ourselves of the love." 

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience 
and faitli, let us at least resist our temptations; let us en- 
ter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, cour- 
age and constancy in our Saxon breasts. This is to be 
done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check 
this lying hospitality and lying afPection.^^ Live no longer 
to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving peo- 
ple with whom we converse. ' Say to them, father, 
mother, wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with 
you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the 
truth's. Be it knoAvn nnto you that henceforward I obey 
no law less than the eternal law.*= I will have no cove- 
nants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my 
parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband 
of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new 
and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. 
1 must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer 



64 SELF-llELIANCE. 

for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we 
shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to 
deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or 
aversions. I wdll so trust that what is deep is holy, that 
I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly 
rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I 
wdll love you ; if you are not, I will not hurt you and 
myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but 
not in the same truth with me, cleave to your compan- 
ions ; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but 
liumbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, 
and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live 
in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day ? You will soon 
love wdiat is dictated by your nature as well as mine, 
and, if we follow^ the truth, it will bring us out safe at 
last. But so you may give these friends pain. ' Yes, but 
I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sen- 
sibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of rea- 
son, when they look out into the region of absolute 
truth ; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.'^ 
The populace think tliat your rejection of popular 
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antino- 
mianism ; and the bold sensualist Avill use the name of 
philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of conscious- 
ness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the 
other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your 
round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in 
the reflex way. Consider W'hether you have satisfied 
your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, 
eat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. 
But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve 



SELF-RELIANCE. 65 

me to myself. I liave my own stern claims and perfect 
circle. It denies the name of dnty to many offices that 
are called duties. But if 1 can discharge its debts, it 
enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any 
one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its com- 
mandment one day. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him who 
has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has 
ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his 
heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in 
good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a 
simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity 
is to others ! 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
called by distinction society, he will see the need of these 
ethics. The sinew and lieart of man seem to be drawn 
out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. 
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, 
and afraid of each otlier. Our age yields no great and 
perfect persons. We want men and women who shall 
renovate life and our social state, but we see that most 
natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, 
have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. 
Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, 
our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but 
society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We 
shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, 
they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men 
say lie is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of 

£ 



66 SELF-RELIANCE. 

our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one 
year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or 
New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he 
is right in being disheartened, and in complaining tlie 
rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or 
Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams 
it, farms it, 'peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a 
newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and sa 
forth, in successive years, and always, hke a cat, falls on 
his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks 
abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ' study- 
ing a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but 
lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred 
chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and 
tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must 
detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self-trust, 
new powers shall appear ; that a man is the word made 
flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should 
be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he 
acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, 
and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, 
but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall 
restore the life of man to splendor, aiid make his name 
dear to all history. 

w It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work 
a revolution in all the offices and relations of men ; in 
their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; 
their modes of living ; their association ; in their prop- 
erty; in their speculative views. ^ 

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves ! That 
which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and 



SELF-RELIANCE. 67 

manly. Praj^er looks abroad and asks for some foreign 
addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses 
itself in endless mazes of natui'al and supernatural, and 
mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a par- 
ticular commodity, — -anything less than all good, — is 
vicious.'^ Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life 
from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a 
beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pro- 
nouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to 
effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes 
dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As 
soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He 
will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the 
farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the 
rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true 
prayers heard throughout nature though for cheap ends. 
Caratach, in Pletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to 
inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, — 

*' His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors ; 
Our valors are our best gods." 

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Dis- 
content is the want of self-reliance : it is infirmity of 
will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the 
sufferer : if not, attend your own work, and already the 
evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as 
base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit 
down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them 
truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them 
once more in commnnication with their own reason. 
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome 



68 S ELF- HE LI AN CE. 

evermore to gods and men is tlie self-lielping man. Eor 
liim all doors are flung wide : liim all tongues greet, all 
honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love 
goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not 
need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and 
celebrate him, because lie held on his way and scorned 
our disapprobation. The gods love him because men 
hated him. " To the persevering mortal," said Zoroas- 
ter, " the blessed Immortals are swift." 

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are 
their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with 
those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us lest we 
die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will 
obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God iu 
my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, 
and recites fables merely of his brother's or his brother's 
brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. 
If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a 
Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it 
imposes its classification on other men, and lo ! a new 
system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and 
so to the number of the objects it touches and brings 
within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But 
chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are 
also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the 
elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the 
Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborg- 
ism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinat- 
ing everything to the new terminology, as a girl who 
has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new 
seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the 



SELF-RELIANCE. 69 

pupil will find his intellectual power lias grown bv the 
study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced 
minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, 
and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the 
walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote liori- 
zon with the walls of the universe ; the luminaries of 
heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master 
built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any 
right to see, — how you can see; 'it must be somehow 
that you stole the light from us.^ They do not yet per- 
ceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break 
into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile 
and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, 
presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and 
low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the 
immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, mil- 
lion-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first 
morning. 

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition 
of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, re- ; 
tains its fascination for all educated Americans. They 
who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the 
imagination did so by sticking fast w^here they were, like 
an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty 
is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man 
stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on 
any occasion, call him from his house, or into foreign 
lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by 
the expression of his countenance, that he goes the mis- 
sionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men 
like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. 



70 SELE-EELIANCE.: 

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of 
the globe,^for the purposes of art, of study, and 'benevo- 
lence, so that the man is first domesticated, or d|)es not 
go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater 
than lie knows. He who travels to be amused, oi to get 
somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from 
himself, and grows old even in youth among old tilings. 
In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become 
old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to niins. 

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys dis- 
cover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream 
that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with 
beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace 
my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in 
Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad 
self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the 
Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with 
sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My 
giant goes with me wherever 1 go. 

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper 
unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The 
intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters 
restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are 
forced to stay at home. We imitate ; and what is imita- 
tion but the travelling of the mind ? Our houses are 
built with foreign taste ; our shelves are garnished with 
foreign ornaments ; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, 
lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul 
created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was 
in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It 
was an application of his own thought to the thing to be 



SELF-UELIANCE. 71 

done and tlie conditions to be observed. And wLy need 
we copy the Doric or tlie Gothic model ? Beauty, con- 
venience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are 
as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will 
study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by 
him, consideriiig the climate, the soil, the length of the 
day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the 
government, he will create a house in which all these will 
find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be 
satisfied also. 

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you 
can present every moment with the cumulative force of 
a whole life's cultivation ; but of the adopted talent of 
another, you have only an extemporaneous, half posses- 
sion. ' That which each can do best, none but his Maker 
can teach him: No man yet knows what it is, nor can, 
till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master 
who could have taught Shakspeare ? Where is the mas- 
ter who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, 
or Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique. 
The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could 
not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the 
study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, 
and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There 
is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand 
as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the 
Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different 
from all these. Not possibly will tlie soul all rich, all 
eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat 
itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, 
surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice : 



72 SELF-RELIANCE. 

for tlie ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. 
Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey 
thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Eoreworld again. 

4. As our Eeligion, our Education, our Art look 
abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume 
themselves on the improvement of society, and no man 
improves. 

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual 
changes ; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christian- 
ized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but this change is not 
amelioration. Eor everything that is given, something is 
taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. 
What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, 
thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of 
exchange in his pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, 
whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undi- 
vided twentieth of a shed to sleep under ! But compare 
the health of the two men, and you shall see that the 
white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the trav- 
eller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and 
in a day or two the flesli shall unite and heal as if you 
struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall 
send the white to his grave. 

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the 
use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks 
so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, 
I but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A 
Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of 
the information when he wants it, the man in the street 
does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does 



SELF-RELIANCE.' 73 

not observe ; the equinox lie knows as little ; and the 
whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his 
mind. His note-books impair his memory ; his libraries 
overload his wit ; the insurance office increases the num- 
ber of accidents ; and it may be a question whether ma- 
chinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by 
refinement some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in 
establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. 
For every Stoic was a Stoic ; but in Christendom where 
is the Christian? 

There is no more deviation in the moral standard 
than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men 
are now than ever were. A singular equality may be 
observed between the great men of the first and of the 
last ages ; nor can all the science, art, religion, and phi- 
losophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater 
men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty 
centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. 
Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, 
but they leave no class. He who is really of their class 
will not be called by their name, but will be his own 
man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts 
and inventions of each period are only its costume, and 
' do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved ma- 
chinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring 
accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to aston- 
ish Parry and Pranklin, whose equipment exhausted the 
resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, 
discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena 
than any one since. Columbus found the New World in 
an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical 

VOL. I. 4 



74 SELF-EELIANCE. 

disuse and perishing of means and niacliinery, which 
were introduced with loud laudatiou a lew years or cen- 
turies before. The great genius returns to essential 
man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war 
among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon con- 
quered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falUng 
back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. 
The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, 
says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, maga- 
zines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation 
of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his sup- 
ply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread 
himself." 

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the 
water of which it is composed does not. The same par- 
ticle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its 
unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up 
a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with 
them. 

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance 
on governments which protect it, is the want of self- 
rehance. Men have looked away from themselves and at 
things so long, that they have come to esteem the re- 
ligious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of prop- 
erty, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they 
feel them to be assaults on property. They measure 
their esteem of each other by what each has, and not 
by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed 
of his property, out of new respect for his nature/ 
Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is 
accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or 



SELF-RELIANCE. 75 

crime ; then lie feels that it is not having ; it does not 
belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, 
because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But 
that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, 
and what the man acquires is living property, which does 
not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or 
fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews 
itself wherever the man breathes. " Thy lot or portion 
of life," said the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; 
therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our depend- 
ence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish 
respect for numbers. The political parties meet in nu- 
merous conventions ; the greater the concourse, and 
with each new uproar of announcement, — The delegation 
from Essex ! The Democrats from New Hampshire ! 
The Whigs of Maine ! — the young patriot feels himself 
stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and 
arms. In like manner the reformers sunmion conven- 
tions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, 
friends, will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but 
by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man 
puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see 
him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every 
recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? 
Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou 
only firm column must presently appear the upholder of 
all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is 
inborn, that he is weak because he lias looked for good 
out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws 
himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
himself, stands in the erect position, commands his 



76 SELF-RELIANCE. 

limbs, works miracles ; just as a man who stands on his 
feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. 

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble 
with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. 
But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal 
with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the 
Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel 
of Cliance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her 
rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recov- 
ery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or 
some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you 
think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe 
it. ' Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing 
can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 



COMPENSATION. 



The wings of Time are black and white, 
Pied w^ith morning and with night. 
Mountain tall and ocean deep 
Trembling balance duly keep. 
In changing moon, in tidal wave, 
Glows the feud of Want and Have. 
Gauge of more and less through space 
Electric star and pencil plays. 
The lonely Earth amid the balls 
That hurry through the eternal hrdls, 
A makeweight flying to the void, 
Supplemental asteroid, 
Or compensatory spark. 
Shoots across the neutral Dark. 



Man 's the elm, and Wealth the vine; 
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine : 
Though the frail ringlets thee deceive. 
None from its stock that vine can reave. 
Fear not, then, thou child infirm. 
There 's no god dare wrong a worm. 
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts. 
And power to him wlio power exerts; 
Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; 
And all tliat Nature made thy own, 
Floating in air or pent in stone. 
Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
And, like thy shadow, follow thee. 



COMPENSATION. 



Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a dis- 
course on Compensation : for it seemed to me when very 
young, that on this subject life was ahead of theology, 
and the people knew more than the preacliers taught. 
The documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be 
drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and 
lay always before me, even in sleep ; for they are the 
tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the trans- 
actions of tlie street, the farm, and the dwelUng-house, 
greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of 
character, the nature and endowment of all men. It 
seemed to me, also, that in it might be shown men a ray 
of divinity, the present action of the soul of this world, 
clean from all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of 
man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, 
conversing with that which he knows was always and 
always must be, because it really is now. It appeared, 
moreover, that if this doctrine could be stated in terms 
with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which 
this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star 
in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey 
that would not suffer us to lose our way. 

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a 



m 

80 COMPENSATION. 

sermon at cliurch. The preacher, a man esteemed for 
his orthodox^y, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doc- 
trine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment 
is not executed in this world ; that the wicked are suc- 
cessful ; that the good are miserable ; and then urged 
from reason and from Scripture a compensation to be 
made to both parties in the next life. No offence ap- 
peared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. 
As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up 
they separated without remark on the sermon. 

Yet what was the import of this teaching ? What did 
the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable 
in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, 
offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprin- 
cipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; 
and that a compensation is to be made to these last here- 
after, by giving them the like gratifications another day, 
— bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? 
This must be the compensation intended ; for what else ? 
Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise ? to 
love and serve men ? Why, that they can do now. 
The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was: 
' We are to have suck a good time as the sinners have 
now ' ; or, to push it to its extreme import : * You sin 
now ; we thall sin by and by ; we would sin now, if we 
could ; not being successful, we expect our revenge 
to-morrow.* 

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad 
are successful ; that justice is not done now. The blind- 
ness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base 
estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly sue- 



COMPENSATIOlSr. 81 

cess, instead of confronting and convicting the world 
from tlie truth; announcing the presence of the soul; 
the omnipotence of the will : and so establishing the 
standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood. 

I find a similar base tone in tlie popular religious 
works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by 
the literary men when occasionally they treat the related 
topics. I think that our popular theology lias gained in 
decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it 
has displaced. But men are better than this theology. 
Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and 
aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own 
experience ; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood 
which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser 
than they know. That which they hear in schools and 
pulpits without afterthought, if said in conversation, 
would probably be questioned in silence. If a man dog- 
matize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine 
laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well 
enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, 
but his incapacity to make his own statement. 

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to 
record some facts that indicate the path of the law of 
Compensation ; happy beyond my expectation, if I shall 
truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every 
part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in heat and cold ; 
in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male and female ; in 
the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals ; 
in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of 
4 * p 



82 COMPENSATION. 

tlie animal body ; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; 
in the undulations of fluids, and of sound ; in the cen- 
trifugal and centripetal gravity ; in electricity, galvanism, 
and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at oiie 
end of a needle ; the opposite magnetism takes place at 
the other end. If the South attracts, the North repels. 
To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable 
dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, aud 
suggests another thing to make it whole : as, spirit, mat- 
ter ; man, woman ; odd, even ; subjective, objective ; in, 
out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. 

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its 
parts. The entire system of things gets represented in 
every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the 
ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, 
in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each 
individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand 
in the elements, is repeated within these small bounda- 
ries. Eor example, in the animal kingdom the physiolo- 
gist has observed that no creatures are favorites, but a 
certain compensation balances every gift and every de- 
fect. A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a 
reduction from another part of the same creature. If the 
head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities 
are cut short. 

The theory of the mechanic forces is another exam- 
ple. "What we gain in power is lost in time; and the 
converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the 
planets are another instance. The influences of climate 
and soil in political history are another. The cold cli- 
mate invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, 
crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 



COMPENSATION. 83 

The same dualism underlies the nature and condition 
of man. Every excess causes a defect; every defect, an 
excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil, its good. 
Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an 
equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its 
moderation with its life. Eor every grain of wit there is 
a grain of folly. Eor everything you have missed, you 
have gained something else ; and for everything you 
gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are in- 
creased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much. 
Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; 
swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates mo- 
nopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not 
more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing, 
than the varieties of condition tend to equalize them- 
selves. There is always some levelling circumstance that 
puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the 
fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all 
others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and 
by temper and position a bad citizen, — a morose ruffian, 
with a dash of the pirate in him ; — nature sends him a 
troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting 
along in the dame's classes at the village school, and 
love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to cour- 
tesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and 
felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and 
keeps her balance true. 

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. 
But the President has paid dear for his White House. 
It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of 
his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so 



84 COMPENSATION. 

conspicuous an appearance before the world, lie is con- 
tent to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect 
behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substan- 
tial and permanent grandeur of genius ? Neither has this 
an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is 
great, and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that 
eminence. With every influx of light comes new danger. 
Has he light? — he must bear witness to the hght, and 
always outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen 
satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the in- 
cessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and 
child. Has he all that the world loves and admires 
and covets? — he must cast behind him their admiration, 
and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become 
a byword and a hissing. 

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. Jt is 
in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things 
refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt diu male admi' 
nistrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the 
checks exist, and will appear. If the government is 
cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, 
the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal 
code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is 
too mild, private vengeance comes in. If the government 
is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an 
overcharge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a 
fiercer flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem 
to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and 
to establish themselves with great indifferency under all 
varieties of circumstance. Under all governments the 
influence of character remains the same, — in Turkey and 



COMPENSATION. 85 

in New England about alike. Under the prhneval des- 
pots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man must 
have been as free as culture could make him. 

These appearances indicate the fact that tlie universe 
is represented in every one of its particles. Everything 
in nature contains all the powers of nature. Everything 
is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one 
type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as 
a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a 
flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form re- 
peats not only the main character of the type, but part 
for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hin- 
drances, energies, and whole system of every other. 
Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend 
of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one 
is an entire emblem of human life ; of its good and ill, 
its trials, its enemies, its course, and its end. And each 
one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and re- 
cite all his destiny. 

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The micro- 
scope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for 
being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, 
appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on 
eternity, — all find room to consist in the small crea- 
ture. So do we ])ut our life into every act. The^irue 
doctrine of jjmn 'presence is,. that God reappears with all 
his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the 
universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If 
the good is there, so is the evil ; if the affinity, so the 
repulsion ; if the force, so the limitation. 

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 



86 COMPENSATION. 

That soul, wliicli within us is a sentiment, outside of us 
is a law. We feel its inspiration ; out there in history 
we can see its fatal strength. " It is in the world, and 
the world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. 
A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. 
Oi KvlBot Alos del evninTovo-iy — The dice of God are 
always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication- 
table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how 
you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its 
exact value, nor more, nor less, still returns to you. 
Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every vir- 
tue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and 
certainty. What we call retribution is the universal 
necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part 
appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. It you 
see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which 
it belongs is there behind. 

Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, integrates 
itself, in a twofold manner : first, in the thing, or in real 
nature ; and, secondly, in the circumstance, or in ap- 
parent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribu- 
tion. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen 
by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen 
by the understanding ; it is inseparable from the thing, 
but is often spread over a long time, and so does not 
become distinct until after many years. The specific 
stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow 
because tliey accompany it. Crime and punishment grow 
out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected 
ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed 
it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed a-id fruit. 



COMPENSATION. 87 

cannot be severed ; for tlie effect already blooms in the 
cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the 
seed. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be 
disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appro- 
priate ; for example, — to gratify the senses, we sever 
the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. 
The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the 
solution of one problem, — how to detach the sensual 
sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from 
the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair ; that is, 
again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so 
thin as to leave it bottomless ; to get a one end, without 
an other end. The soul says. Eat ; the body would 
feast. The soul says. The man and woman shall be one 
flesh and one soul ; the body would join the flesh only. 
The soul says. Have dominion over all things to the end 
of virtue ; the body would have the power over things to 
its own ends. 

The soul strives amain to live and work through all 
things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be 
added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. 
The particular man aims to be somebody ; to set up for 
himself; to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in 
particulars, to ride, that he may ride ; to dr^ss, that he 
may be dressed ; to eat, that he may eat ; and to gov- 
ern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great ; they 
would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They tlnnk 
that to be great is to possess one side of nature, the 
sweet, without the other side, — the bitter. 

This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. 



88 COMPENSATION. 

Up to til's day, it must be owned, no projector has had 
the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind 
our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, 
profit out of profitable things, power out of strong 
things, as soon as we seek to separate them from the 
whole. We can no more halve things and get the 
sensual good, by itself, than w^e can get an inside that 
shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. 
"Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running 
back." 

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the 
unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that 
he does not know ; that they do not touch him ; — but the 
brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If 
he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another 
more vital part. If he has escaped them in form, and in 
the appearance, it is because he has resisted his life, and 
fled from himself, and the retribution is so m.uch death. 
So signal is the failure of all attempts to make this sep- 
aration of the good from the tax, that the experiment 
would not be tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but 
for the circumstance, that when the disease began in the 
w411, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once 
infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in 
each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of 
an object, and not see the sensual hurt ; he sees the mer- 
maid's head, but not the dragon's tail ; and thinks he 
can cut off that w-hich he would have, from that which 
he would not have. " How secret art thou who dwellest 
in the highest Heavens in silence, thou only great 
(jod, sprinkling with an unwearied Providence certain 



COMPENSATION. 89 

penal blindnesses upon sucli as Lave unbridled de- 
sires ! " * 

The human soul is true to these facts in tlie painting 
of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. 
It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks 
call Jupiter, Supreme Mind ; but liaving traditionally 
ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily 
made amends to reason, by tying up the hands of so bad 
a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England. 
Prometheus knows one secret which Jove must bargain 
for; Minerva, another. He cannot get his own thun- 
ders; Minerva keeps the key of them. 

*' Of all the gods, I only know the keys 
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
His thunders sleep." 

A plain confession of the inworking of the All, and of 
its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same 
ethics ; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be 
invented and get any currency which was not moral. 
Aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though 
Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite 
invulnerable ; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by 
which Thetis held him. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is 
not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he 
was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which 
it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a 
crack in everything God has made. It would seem, 
there is always this vindictive circumstance stealing in 

* St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. 



90 COMPENSx\TION. 

at unawares, even into the wild poesv in which the hu- 
man fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake 
itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick 
of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that in na- 
ture nothing can be given, all things are sold. 

This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps 
watch in the universe, and lets no offence go unchas- 
tised. The Furies, they said, are attendants on justice, 
and if the sun in Heaven should transgress his path, 
they would punish him. The poets related that stone 
walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had an occult 
sympathy with the wrongs of their owners ; that the 
belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the Trojan hero 
over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and 
the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose 
point Ajax fell. They recorded, that when the Thasians 
erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one 
of his rivals went to it by night, and endeavored to 
throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved 
it from its pedestal, and was crushed to death beneath 
its fall 

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came 
from thought above the will of the writer. That is the 
best part of each writer, which has nothing private in it ; 
that which he does not know; that which flowed out 
of his constitution, and not from his too active inven- 
tion ; that which in the study of a single artist you 
might not easily find, but in the study of many, you 
would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is 
not, but the work of man in that early Hellenic world, 
that I would know. The name and circumstance of 



COMPENSATION. 91 

Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass when 
we come to the highest criticism. We are to see that 
which man was tending to do in a given period, and was 
hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the inter- 
fering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakspeare, the 
organ whereby man at the moment wrought. 

Still more striking is the expression of tliis fact in the 
proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature 
of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth, without 
qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each 
nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which 
the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow 
the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to 
say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of 
laws which the pulpit, the senate, and the college deny, 
is hourly preached in all markets and workshops by 
flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as om- 
nipresent as that of birds and flies. 

All things are double, one against another. — Tit for 
tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a tooth ; blood for 
blood ; measure for measure ; love for love. — Give and it 
shall be given you. — He that watereth shall be watered 
himself. — What will you have ? quoth God ; pay for it 
and take it. — Nothing venture, nothing have. — Thou 
shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, 
no less. — Who doth not work shall not eat. — Harm 
watch, harm catch. — Curses always recoil on the head 
of him who imprecates them. — If you put a chain 
around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself 
around your own. — Bad counsel confounds the adviser. 
— The Devil is an ass. 



92 COMPENSATION. 

It is thus written, because it is tlms in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our will 
by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside 
from the public good, but our act arranges itself by irre- 
sistible magnetism iu a line with the poles of the world. 

■ A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his 
will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye 
of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts 
on him who utters it. It is a thread -ball thrown at a 
mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. 
Or, rather, it is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwind- 
ing, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and if the har- 
poon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to 
cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the boat. 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. " No 
man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to 
him," said Burke. Tiie exclusive in fashionable life does 
not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the 
attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion 
does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, 
in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and 
ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you 
leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The 
senses would make things of all persons ; of women, of 
children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, " I will get it 
from his purse or get it from his skin," is sound phi- 
losophy. 

All infractions of love and equity in our social rela- 
tions are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. 
Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, 
I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as 



COMPENSATION. 93 

water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with 
perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as 
soon as there is any departure from simpHcity, and at- 
tempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for 
him, my neighbor feels the wrong ; he shrinks from me 
as far as I have shrunk from him : his eyes no longer 
seek mine ; there is war between us ; there is hate in 
hnn and fear in me. 

All the old abuses in society, universal and particular, 
all unjust accumulations of property and power, are 
avenged in the same manner. Pear is an instructor of 
great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. One 
thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he ap- 
pears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not 
well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our 
property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated 
classes are timid. Pear for ages has boded and mowed 
and gibbered over government and property. That ob- 
scene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great 
wrongs which must be revised. 

Of the like nature is that expectation of change which 
instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. 
The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, 
the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every 
generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble asceti- 
cism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the bal- 
ance of justice througli tlie heart and mind of man. 

Experienced men of the world know very well that it 
is best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a 
man often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower 
runs in his own debt. Has a man gained anything who 



94 COMPENSATION. 

has received a liundred favors and rendered none ? Has 
he gahied bj borrowing, through indolence or cunning, 
his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money ? There arises 
on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on 
the one part, and of debt on the other; that is, of su- 
periority and inferiorily. The transaction remains in. the 
memory of himself and his neighbor; and every new 
transaction alters, according to its nature, their relation 
to each otlier. He may soon come to see that he had 
better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in 
his neighbor's coach, and that " the highest price he can 
pay for a thing is to ask for it." 

A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, 
and know that it is the part of prudence to face every 
claimant, and pay every just demand on your time, your 
talents, or your heart. Always pay; for, first or last, 
you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events 
may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is 
only a postponement. You must pay at last your own 
debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity 
wdiich only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of 
nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax 
is levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. 
He is base — and that is the one base thing in the uni- 
verse — to receive favors and render none. In the or- 
der of nature we cannot render benefits to those from 
w^hom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit 
we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for 
deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much 
good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and 
worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 



COMPENSATION. 93 

Labor is watched over bj tlie same pitiless laws. 
Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What 
we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some ap- 
I3lication of good sense to a common want. It is best to 
pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense 
applied to gardening ; in your sailor, good sense applied 
to navigation ; in the house, good sense applied to cook- 
ing, sewing, serving ; in your agent, good sense applied 
to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your pres- 
ence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But 
because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in 
life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from him- 
self. The swindler swindles himself. Eor the real price 
of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and 
credit are signs. Tliese signs, like paper money, may 
be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, 
namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited 
or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but 
by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure 
motives. The cheat,, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot 
extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which 
his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The 
law of nature is, 3)o_the tiling, and you shall have the 
power ; but they who do not the thing have not the power. 

Hujnan labor, through all its forms, from the sharpen- 
ing of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, 
is one immense illustration of the perfect compensation 
of the universe. Tiie absolute balance of Give and 
Take, the doctrine that everything has its price, — and 
if that price is not paid, not that thing but something 
else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get anything 



96 COMPENSATION. 

without its price, — is not less sublime in the columns 
of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of 
light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of na- 
ture. I cannot doubt that the high laws wliich each man 
sees implicated in those processes with which he is con- 
versant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, 
which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, 
which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill 
as in the history of a state, — do recommend to him his 
trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his 
imagination. 

The league between virtue and nature engages all 
things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful 
laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the 
traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and 
benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a 
rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. 
Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell 
on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of 
every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You 
cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the 
footrtrack, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave 
no inlet or clew. Some danniing circumstance always 
transpires. The laws and substances of nature — water, 
snow, wind, gravitation — become penalties to the thief. 

On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness 
for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All 
love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of 
an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, 
which like fire turns everything to its own nature, so 
that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal 



COMPENSATION. 97 

armies sent against Napoleon, when lie approached, cast 
down their colors and from enemies became friends, so 
disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, prove 
benefactors : — 

" Winds blow and waters roll 
Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
Yet in themselves are nothing." 

The good are befriended even bj weakness and defect. 
As no man had ever a point of pride that was not inju- 
rious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not 
somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable 
admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the 
hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in 
the thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his 
lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man thoroughly 
understands a truth until he has contended against it, 
so no man lias a thorough acquaintance with the hin- 
drances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the 
one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own 
want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that un- 
fits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to 
entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help ; 
and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell 
with pearl. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indig- 
nation which arms itself with secret forces does not 
awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely as- 
sailed. A great man is always willing to be little. 
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to 
sleep. Wlien he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has 

VOL. I. 5 G 



98 COMPENSATION. 

a chance to learn sometliing ; he has been put on his 
wits, on his manhood ; he has gained facts ; learns his 
ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got 
moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself 
on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest 
than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound cica- 
trizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and wheii 
they would triumph, lo ! he has passed on invulnerable. 
Blame is safer than praise.- I hate to be defended in a 
newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against 
me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as 
honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one 
that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, 
every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. 
As the Sandwich-Islander believes that the strength and 
valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we 
gain the strength of the temptation we resist. 

The same guards which protect us from disaster, de- 
fect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness 
and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our insti- 
tutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. 
Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish supersti- 
tion that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible 
for a man to be cheated by any one^tut himself, as for 
a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is 
a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and 
soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfil- 
ment of every contract, so that honest service cannot 
come to loss. - If you serve an ungrateful master, serve 
him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke 
shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, 



COMPENSATION. 99 

the better for you ; for compound interest on compound 
interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.- 

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to 
cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope 
of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be 
many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of 
bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and 
traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily de- 
scending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of 
activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole 
constitution. It persecutes a principle ; it would whip 
a right ; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire 
and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who 
have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run 
with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to 
the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against 
the wrong-doers. Tlie martyr cannot be dishonored. 
Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every prison a 
more illustrious abode ; every burned book or house en- 
lightens the world ; every suppressed or expunged word 
reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours 
of sanity and consideration are always arriving to com- 
munities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and 
the martyrs are justified. 

Thus do all things preach the indiflerency of circum- 
stances. The man is all. ^[Everything has two sides, a 
good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn 
to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not 
the doctrine of indiff'erency. The thouglitless say, on 
hearing these representations, What boots it to do well ? 



100 COMPENSATION. 

there is one event to good and evil ; if I gain any good, 
I must pay for it ; if I lose any good, I gain some otlier ; 
all actions are indiiferent. 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, 
to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, 
but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of. 
circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect 
balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Es- 
sence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. 
Being in the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self- 
balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and 
times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx 
from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the 
same. Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the 
great Night or shade, on which, as a background, the 
living universe paints itself forth ; but no fact is begotten 
by it ; it cannot work ; for it is not. It cannot work 
any good ; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inas- 
much as it ib worse not to be than to be. 

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, 
because the crimnal adheres to his vice and contumacy, 
and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in 
visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his 
nonsense befv)re men and angels. Has he therefore out- 
witted the law ? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity 
and the lie with him, he so far deceases from nature. -In 
some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong 
to the understanding also ; but should we not see it, 
this deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. 

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the 
gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is 



COMPENSATION. 101 

no penalty to virtue ; no penalty to wisdom ; tliey are 
proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, I prop- 
erly am ; in a virtuous act, I add to the world ; 1 plant 
into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and 
see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. 
There can be no excess to love ; none to knowledge ; 
none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in 
the purest sense. '^The soul refuses limits, and always 
affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.'^ 
-^ Man's life is a progress, and not a station. His in- 
stinct is trust. Our instinct uses *^ more " and " less " in 
application to him, of the presence of the soul, and not of 
its absence ; the brave man is greater than the coward ; 
the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man, and not 
less, than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the 
good of virtue ; for that is the incoming of God himself, 
or absolute existence, without any comparative. Mate- 
rial good has its tax, and if it came without desert or 
sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind will blow 
it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, 
and may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, 
that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. 
I no longer wish to meet a good 1 do not earn, for exam- 
ple, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings 
with it new burdens. 1 do not wish more external 
goods, — neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, 
nor persons. The gain is apparent ; the tax is certain. 
But there is no tax on the knowledge that the compen- 
sation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up treas- 
ure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I 
contract the boundaries of possible mischief. 1 learn the 



10£ 



COMPENSATION. 



wisdom of St. Bernard, — " Nothing can work mc dam- 
age except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about 
with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own 
fault." 

In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the 
inequahties of condition. The radical tragedy of nature 
seems to be the distinction of More and Less. How 
can Less not feel the pain ; how not feel indignation or 
malevolence towards More ? Look at those who have 
less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what 
to make of it. He almost shuns their eye ; he fears they 
will upbraid God. What should they do ? It seems a 
great injustice. But see the facts nearly, and these 
mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them, as 
the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. Tiie heart and soul 
of all men being one, this bitterness of His and 3Ime 
ceases. His is mine. I am my brother, and my brother 
is me. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great 
neighbors, I can yet love ; I can still receive ; and he 
that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. 
Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my 
guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and 
the estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is the 
nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus and 
Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I con- 
quer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. 
His virtue, — is not that mine ? His wit, — if it cannot 
be made mine, it is not wit. 

Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The 
changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity 
of men are advertisements of a nature whose law is 



COMPENSATION. 103 

growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quit- 
ting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, 
and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its 
beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of 
its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In propor- 
tion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are 
frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, 
and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, 
becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane 
through which the living form is seen, and not, as in 
most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many 
dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is 
imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the 
man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. 
And such should be the outward biography of man in 
time, a putting oft* of dead circumstances day by day, as 
he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our 
lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not co- 
operating with the divine expansion, this growth comes 
by shocks. 

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our 
angels go. We do not see that they only go out, that 
archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. 
We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper 
eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is 
any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yes- 
terday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where 
once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe 
that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We 
cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. 
But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty 



104 COMPENSATION. 

saitli, 'Up and onward forevermore ! ' We cannot stay 
amid the ruins. Neither will we relj on the new ; and 
so we walk ever with reverted ejes, like those monsters 
who look backwards. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made ap- 
parent to the understanding also, after long intervals of 
time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a 
loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment un- 
paid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the 
deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death 
of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed noth- 
ing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of 
a guide or genius ; for it commonly operates revolutions 
in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or 
of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a 
wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and 
allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the 
growth of character. It permits or constrains the forma- 
tion of new acquaintances, and the reception of new in- 
fluences that prove of the first importance to the next 
years ; and the man or woman who would have remained 
a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and 
too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the 
walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian 
of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbor- 
hoods of men. 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 



The living Heaven tliy prayers respect. 

House at once and architect. 

Quarrying man's rejected hours. 

Builds therewith eternal towers ; 

Sole and self- commanded works, 

Fears not undermining days, 

Grows by decays, 

And, by the famous might that lurks 

In reaction and recoil. 

Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil ; 

Forging, through swart arms of Offence, 

The silver seat of Innocence. 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 



When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, 
when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we 
discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind 
us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds 
do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even 
the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their 
place in the pictures of memory. The river-bank, the 
weed at the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, 
— however neglected in the passing, — have a grace in 
the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers 
lias added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul 
will not know either deformity or pain. If, in the hours 
of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we 
should say, that we had never made a sacrifice. In these 
hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken 
from us that seems much. All loss, all pain, is particu- 
lar ; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. Neither 
vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever 
stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for exag- 
geration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that 
ever was driven. ^ Eor it is only the finite that has 
wrought and suffered ; the infinite lies stretched in smil- 
ing repose. 



108 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if 
man will live the life of nature, and not import into his 
mind difficulties which are none of his. No man need be 
perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what 
strictly belongs to him, and, though very ignorant of 
books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual ob- 
structions and doubts. Our young ])eople are diseased 
with the theological problems of original sin, origin of 
evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented 
a practical difficulty to any man, — never darkened 
across any man's road, wlio did not go out of his way to 
seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, 
and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught 
them cannot describe their liealth or prescribe the cure. 
A simple mind will not know these enemies. It is quite 
another thing that he should be able to give account 
of his faith, and expound to another the theory of his 
self-union and freedom. This requires rare gifts. Yet, 
without this self-knowledge, there may be a sylvan 
strength and integrity in that which lie is. *'A few 
strong instincts and a few plain rules " suffice us. 

My will never gave the images in my mind the rank 
they now take. The regular course of studies, the 
years of academical and professional education, have not 
yielded me better facts than some idle books under the 
bench at the Latin School. What we do not call educa- 
tion is more precious than tliat which we call so. We 
form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its 
comparative value. And education often wastes its effort 
in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, 
whicli is sure to select what belongs to it. 



SPIllITUAL LAWS. 109 

In like manner, our moral nature is vitiated by any 
interference of our will. People represent virtue as a 
struggle, and take to themselves great airs upon tlieir 
attainments, and the question is everywhere vexed, when 
a noble nature is commended, whether the man is not 
better who strives with temptation. But there is no 
merit in the matter. Either God is there, or he is not 
there. We love characters in proportion as they are 
impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks or 
knows about his virtues, the better we like him. Timo- 
leon's victories are the best victories, — which ran and 
flowed like Homer's verses, Plutarch said. When we 
see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant 
as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and 
are, and not turn sourly on the angel, and say, ' Crump 
is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his 
native devils.' 

Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature 
over will in all practical life. There is less intention in 
history than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid, far- 
sighted plans to Csesar and Napoleon ; but the best of 
their power was in nature, not in them. Men of an 
extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have 
always sung, ' Not unto us, not unto us.' According to 
the faith of their times, they have built altars to Fortune, 
or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. ' Their success lay in 
their parallelism to the course of thought, which found 
in them an unobstructed channel ; and tlie wonders of 
which they were the visible conductors seemed to the 
eye their deed. Did the wires generate the galvanism ? 
It is even true that there was less in them on which they 



110 SPIHITUAL LAWS. 

could reflect, tlian in another ; as the virtue of a pipe is to 
be smooth and hollow. That which externally seemed 
will and immovableness was willingness and self-annihi- 
lation. Could Shakspeare give a tlieory of Shakspeare ? 
Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius con- 
vey to others any insight into his methods ? If he 
could communicate that secret, it would instantly lose 
its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and the 
vital energy, the power to stand and to go. 

The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations, 
that our life might be much easier and simpler than we 
make it ; that the world might be a happier place than it 
is ; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and 
despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing 
of the teeth ; that we miscreate our own evils. We in- 
terfere with the optimism of nature ; for, whenever we 
get this vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser mind 
in the present, we are able to discern that we are begirt 
with laws which execute themselves. 

The face of eternal nature teaches the same lesson. 
V Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does not 
like our benevolence or our learning much better than 
she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of 
the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition convention, or 
the Temperance meeting, or the Transcendental club, 
into the fields and woods, she says to us, ' So hot ? my 
little sir.' 

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs 
intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the 
sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love should 
make joy ; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sun- 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. Ill 

day schools and churches and pauper societies are yokes 
to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. 
There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at 
which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all vir- 
tue work in one and the same way ? Why should all 
give dollars ? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, 
and we do not think any good will come of it. We have 
not dollars ; merchants have ; let them give them, farm- 
ers will give corn ; poets will sing ; women will sew ; 
laborers will lend a hand ; the children will bring flowers. 
And why drag this dead- weight of a Sunday school over 
the whole Christendom ? /It is natural and beautiful that 
childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but 
it is time enough to answer questions when they are 
asked.* Do not shut up the young people against their 
will in a pew, and force the children to ask them ques- 
tions for an hour against their will. 

If we look wider, things are all alike ; laws, and let- 
ters, and creeds, and modes of living seem a travesty of 
truth. Our society is encumbered by ponderous ma- 
chinery, which resembles the endless aqueducts which 
the Homans built over hill and dale, and which are super- 
seded by the discovery of the law that water rises to the 
level of its source. It is a Chinese wall which any nim- 
ble Tartar can leap over. It is a standing army, not so 
good as a peace. It is a graduated, titled, richly ap- 
pointed empire, quite superfluous when town-meetings 
are found to answer just as well. 

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works 
by short w^ays. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When 
the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the 



112 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all 
animals is a falling forward. All our manual labor and 
works of strength, as prying, splitting, digging, rowing, 
and so forth, are done by dint of continual falling, and the 
globe, earth, moon, comet, sun, star, fall for ever and ever. 

The simplicity of the universe is very different from 
the simplicity of a machine. He who sees mon-al nature 
out and out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is 
acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The sim- 
plicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, 
but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can nowise be 
made. We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, know- 
ing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness. of nature 
is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature is felt 
in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our 
fluid consciousness. We pass in the world for sects and 
schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the time 
jejune babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew 
up. Every man sees that he is that middle point, 
whereof everything may be affirmed and denied with 
equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, 
he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you 
say of the seraphim, and of the tin-pedler. There is no 
permanent wise man, except in the figment of the Stoics. 
We side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the 
coward and the robber ; but we have been ourselves that 
coward and robber, and shall be again, not in the low 
circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs pos- 
sible to the soul. 

A little consideration of what takes place around us 
every day would show us, that a higher law than that of 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 113 

our will regulates events ; that our painful labors are un- 
necessary, and fruitless ; that only in our easy, simple, 
spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting 
ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and 
love, — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of 
care. my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at 
the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, 
so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so 
infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we pros- 
per when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to 
wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or 
they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things 
goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is 
guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall 
hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully 
your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of 
action, and of entertainment ? Certainly there is a possi- 
ble right for you that precludes the need of balance and 
wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place 
and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of 
the stream of power and wisdom which animates all 
whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to 
truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you 
put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the 
world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we 
will not be marplots with our miserable interferences, 
the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of 
men would go on far better than now, and the heaven 
predicted from the beginning of the world, and still pre- 
dicted from tlie bottom of the heart, would organize it- 
self, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun. 

II 



114 SPIEITUAL LAWS/ 

1 say, do not choose ; but that is a figure of speech 
by which I would distinguish wliat is commonly called 
choice among men, and which is a partial act, the choice 
of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a 
whole act of the man. But that which I call right or 
goodness is the choice of my constitution; and that 
which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the 
state or circumstance desirable to my constitution ; and 
the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the 
work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable 
to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. 
It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds, that they 
are the custom of his trade. What business has he with 
an evil trade ? Has he not a calli?ig in his character. 

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the 
call. There is one direction in which all space is open 
to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to 
endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river ; he runs 
against obstructions on every side but one ; on that side 
all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely 
over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This tal- 
ent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode 
in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He 
inclines to do something w^hich is easy to him, and good 
when it is done, but which no other man can do. He 
has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own 
powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from 
the work of any other. His ambition is exactly propor- 
tioned to his powers. ^ The height of the pinnacle is de- 
termined by the breadth of the base. Every man has 
this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 115 

mail lias any other call. The pretence that he has an- 
other call, a summons by name and personal election and 
outward " signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in 
the roll of common men," is fanaticism, and betrays ob- 
tuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the in- 
dividuals, and no respect of persons therein. 

By doing his work, he makes the need felt which he 
can supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. 
By doing his own work, he unfolds himself. It is the 
vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. 
/ Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should 
let out all the length of all the reins ; should find or 
make a frank and hearty expression of what force and 
meaning is in him. The common experience is, that the 
man fits himself as well as he can to the customary de- 
tails of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as 
a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he 
moves ; the man is lost. Until he can manage to com- 
municate himself to others in his full stature and propor- 
tion, he does not yet find his vocation. He .must find in 
that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his 
work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his 
thinking and character make it liberal. Whatever he 
knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth 
doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know 
and honor him aright. Eoolish, whenever you take the 
meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead 
of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your char- 
acter and aims. We like only such actions as have 
already long had the praise of men, and do not perceive 
that anything man can do may be divinely done. We 



116 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

think greatness entailed or organized in some places or 
duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see 
that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and 
Eulenstein from a jewsliarp, and a nimble-fingered lad 
out of slireds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer 
out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habita- 
tion and company in whicli he was hidden. What we 
call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition 
and society whose poetry is not yet written, but which 
you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as 
any. In our estimates, let us take a lesson from kings. 
The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the 
impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, 
royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. 
To make habitually a new estimate, — that is elevation. 

What a man does, that he has. What has he to do 
with hope or fear ? In himself is his might. Let him 
regard no good as solid, but that which is in his nature, 
and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. 
The goods of fortune may come aijd go like summer 
leaves ; let him scatter them on every wind as the mo- 
mentary signs of his infinite productiveness. 

He may have his own. A man's genius, the quality 
that differences him from every other, the susceptibility 
to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for 
him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the 
character of the universe. A man is a method, a pro- 
gressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering 
his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his 
own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round 
him. He is like one of those booms which are set out 



SPIEITUAL LAWS. 117 

from the sliore on rivers to catcli drift-wood, or like the 
loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, 
persons, which dwell in his memory without his being 
able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to 
him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They 
are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts 
of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words 
for in the conventional images of books and other minds. 
What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to 
the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand per- 
sons, as Avorthy, go by it, to whom I give no regard. It 
is enough that these particulars speak to me. A few 
anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few 
incidents, liave an emphasis in your memory out of all 
proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure 
them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. 
Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and 
cast about for illustration and facts more usual in litera- 
ture. ' What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's 
emphasis is always right. 

Over all things that are agreeable to his nature and 
genius, the man has the highest right. Everywhere lie 
may take what belongs to his spiritual estate, nor can he 
take anything else, though all doors were open, nor can 
all the force of men hinder him from taking so much. It 
is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has a 
right to know it. It will tell itself. That mood into 
which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us. To 
the thoughts of that state of mind he has a right. All 
the secrets of tliat state of mind he can compel. This is 
a law which statesmen use in practice. All the terrors 



118 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

of llie rrcncli Republic, wliicli lield Austria in awe, were 
unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent 
to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with 
the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, 
that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of 
Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, con- 
stitutes a sort of freemasonry. M. de Narbonne, in less 
than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial 
cabinet. 

Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be under- 
stood. Yet a man may come to find that the strongest 
of defences and of ties, — that he has been understood ; 
and he who has received an opinion may come to find it 
the most inconvenient of bonds. 

• If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to con- 
ceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated hito 
that as into any which he publishes.^ If you pour water 
into a vessel twisted into coils and angles, it is vain to 
say, I will pour it only into this or that ; it will find its 
level in all. Men feel and act the consequences of your 
doctrine, without being able to show how they follow. 
Show us an arc of the curve, and a good mathematician 
will find out the whole figure. We are always reasoning 
from the seen to the unseen. Hence the perfect intelli- 
gence that subsists between wise men of remote ages. A 
man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, but 
time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a 
secret doctrine, had he ? What secret can he conceal 
from the eyes of Bacon ? of Montaigne ? of Kant ? 
Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, "They are pub- 
lished and not published." 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 119 

No man can learn wliat lie lias not preparation for 
learning, however near to his eyes is the object. A 
chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter, 
and he shall be never the wiser, — the secrets he would 
not utter to a chemist for an estate. "God screens us 
evermore from premature ideas." Our eyes are holden 
that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until 
the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we be- 
hold them, and the time when we saw them not is like 
a dream. 

*" Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth 
he sees.^ The world is very empty, and is indebted to 
this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride. "Earth fills 
her lap with splendors" not her own. The vale of 
Tempe, Tivoli, and Rome are earth and water, rocks and 
sky. There are as good earth and water in a thousand 
places, yet how unaffecting ! 

People are not the better for the sun and moon, the 
horizon and the trees ; as it is not observed that the 
keepers of Roman galleries, or the valets of painters, 
have any elevation of thought, or that librarians are wiser 
men than others. '' There are graces in the demeanor of 
a polished and noble person, which are lost upon the eye 
of a churl. These are like the stars whose light has not 
yet reached us.. 

He may see what he maketh. Our dreams are the sequel 
of our waking knowledge. The visions of the night bear 
some proportion to the visions of the day. Hideous 
dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day. We see 
our evil affections embodied in bad physiognomies. On 
the Alps the traveller sometimes beholds his own shadow 



120 SPIUITUAL LAWS. 

magnified to a giant, so that every gesture of bis Land is 
terrific. " My children/' said an old man to his boys 
scared by a figure in the dark entry, — ''my children, you 
will never see anything worse than yourselves." As in 
dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid events of the world, 
every man sees himself in colossal, without knowing that 
it is himself. The good, compared to the evil which he 
sees, is as his own good to his own evil. Every quality 
of his mind is magnified in some one acquaintance, and 
every emotion of his heart in some one. He is like a 
quincunx of trees, which counts five, east, west, north, 
or south ; or, an initial, medial, and terminal acrostic. 
And why not? He cleaves to one person, and avoids 
another, accordhig to their likeness or unlikeness to him- 
self, truly seeking himself in his associates, and moreover 
in his trade, and habits, and gestures, and meats, and 
druiks ; and comes at last to be faithfully represented by 
every view you take of his circumstances. 

He may read wliat he writes. What can we see or 
acquire, but what we are ? You have observed a skilful 
man reading Yirgil. Well, that author is a thousand 
books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your 
two hands, and read your eyes out ; you will never find 
what I find. If any ingenious reader would have a mo- 
nopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets, he is as secure 
now the book is Englished, as if it were imprisoned in 
the Pelews' tongue. It is with a good book as it is with 
good company. Introduce a base person among gentle- 
men ; it is all to no purpose ; he is not their fellow. 
Every society protects itself. The company is perfectly 
safe, and he is not one of them, though his body is in 
the room. . 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 121 

What avails it to figlit witli the eternal laws of mind, 
wliicli adjust the relation of all persons to each other, by 
the mathematical measure of their hayings and beings ? 
Gertrude is enamored of Guj ; how high, how aristo- 
cratic, how Koman his mien and manners ! to live with 
him were life indeed, and no purchase is too great ; and 
heaven and earth are moved to tliat end. Well, Ger- 
trude has Guy ; but what now avails how high, how aris- 
tocratic, how Roman his mien and manners, if his heart 
and aims are in the senate, in the theatre, and in the 
billiard-room, and she has no aims, no conversation, 
that can enchant her graceful lordp 

He shall have his own society. We can love nothing 
but nature. The most wonderful talents, the most meri- 
torious exertions, really avail very little with us ; but 
nearness or likeness of nature, — how beautiful is the 
ease of its victory ! Persons approach us famous for 
their beauty, for their accomplishments, worthy of all 
wonder for their charms and gifts; they dedicate their 
whole skill to the hour and the company, with very im- 
perfect result. To be sure, it would be ungrateful in us 
not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done, a 
person of related mind, a brother or sister by nature, 
comes to us so softly and easily, so nearly and intimately, 
as if it were the blood in our proper veins, that we feel 
as if some one was gone, instead of another having 
come ; we are utterly relieved and refreshed ; it is a sort 
of joyful solitude. We foolishly think, in our days of 
sin, that we must court friends by compliance to the 
customs of society, to its dress, its breeding, and its esti- 
mates. But only that soul can be my friend which I 

VOL. I. 6 



122 SPIEITUAL LAWS. 

encounter on the line of my own marcli, that soul to 
which I do not decline, and which does not decline to 
me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in 
its own all my experience. The scholar forgets himself, 
and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the 
world, to deserve the smile of beaut}^, and follow some 
giddy girl not yet taught by religious passion to know 
the noble woman with all that is serene, oracular, and 
beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love shall 
follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the 
neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be 
formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by 
others' eyes. 

He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all 
acceptation, that a man may have that allowance he 
takes. Take the place and attitude which belong to you, 
and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It 
leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own 
rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. 
It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing 
and being, whether you sneak about and deny your own 
name, or whether you see your work produced to the 
concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution 
of the stars. 

The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may 
teach by dohig, and not otherwise. If lie can commu- 
nicate himself, he can teach, but not by words. He 
teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There 
is "no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same 
state or principle in which jo\x are ; a transfusion takes 
place ; he is you, and you are he ; then is a teaching ; 



SPIUITUAL LAWS. 123 

and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can lie ever 
quite lose the benefit. But your propositions run out 
of one ear as they ran in at the other. We see it adver- 
tised that Mr. Grand will deliver an oration on the 
Eourth of July, and Mr. Hand before the Mechanics' 
Association, and we do not go thitlier, because we know 
that these gentlemen will not communicate their own 
character and experience to the company. If we had 
reason to expect such a confidence, we should go 
through all inconvenience and opposition. The sick 
would be carried in litters. But a public oration is an 
escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a 
communication, not a speech, not a man. 

A like Nemesis presides over all intellectual works. 
We have yet to learn, that the thing uttered in words is 
not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms 
of logic or of oath can give it evidence. ^ The sentence 
must also contain its own apology for being spoken.' 

The effect of any writing on the public mind is mathe- 
matically measurable by its depth of thought. How 
much water does it draw ? If it awaken you to think, if 
it lift you from your feet with the great voice of elo- 
quence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, 
over the minds of men ; if the pages instruct you not, 
they will die like flies in the hour. ' The way to speak 
and write what shall not go out of fashion is, to speak 
and write sincerely. The argument which has not power 
to reach my own practice, I may well doubt, will fail to 
reach yours. But take Sidney's maxim, "Look in thy 
heart, and write." He that writes to himself writes to 
an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made 



124 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

public, wliicli you have come at in attempting to satisfy 
your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject 
from his ear, and not from his heart, should know that 
lie has lost as much as he seems to have gained, and 
when the empty book has gathered all its praise, and half 
the people say, 'What poetry! what genius!' it still 
needs fuel to make fire. That only profits which is 
profitable. ^Life alone can impart Hfe; and though we 
should burst, we can only be valued as Ave make our- 
selves valuable.' There is no luck m literary reputation. 
They who make up the final verdict upon every book are 
not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it 
appears ; but a court as of angels, a public not to be 
bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, 
decides upon every man's title to fame. Only those 
books come down which deserve to last. Gilt edges, 
vellum, and morocco, and presentation copies to all the 
libraries, will not preserve a book in circulation beyond 
its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole's Noble 
and Eoyal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, 
or Pollok may endure for a night, but Moses and Homer 
stand forever. There are not in the world at any one 
time more than a dozen persons who read and understand 
Plato : never enough to pay for an edition of his works ; 
yet to every generation these come duly down, for the 
sake of those few persons, as if God brought them in 
his hand. " No book," said Bentley, " was ever written 
down by any but itself." The permanence of all books 
is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own 
specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their con- 
tents to the constant mind of man. " Do not trouble 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 125 

yourself too much about tlie light on your statue," said ■ 
Michael Angelo to the young sculptor; "the light of 
the public square will test its value." 
y In like manner the effect of every action is measured 
by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. 
The great man knew not that he was great. It took a 
century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he 
did because he must ; it was the most natural thing in 
the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the mo- 
ment. But now, everything he did, -even to the lifting 
of his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, 
and is called an institution.- 

These are the demonstrations in a few particulars of 
the genius of nature ; they show the direction of the 
stream. But the stream is blood; every drop is alive. 
Truth has not single victories ; all things are its organs, 
— not only dust and stones, but errors and lies. The 
laws of disease, physicians say, are as beautiful as the 
laws of health. Our philosophy is affirmative, and readily 
accepts the testimony of negative facts, as every shadow 
points to the sun. By a divine necessity, every fact in 
nature is constrained to offer its testimony. 

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most 
fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, the 
intimated purpose, expresses character. If you act, you 
show character ; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it. 
You think, because you have spoken nothing when others 
spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the 
church, on slavery, on marriage, on socialism, on secret 
societies, on the college, on parties and persons, that your 
verdict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved wis- 



126 " SPIE,ITUJ<L LAWS. 

dom. Far otherwise ; your' silence answers very loud. 
You have no oracle to utter, and your fellow-men have 
learned that you cannot help them ; for, oracles speak. 
Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her 
voice ? 

Dreadful limits are set in nature to the powers of dis- 
simulation. Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling mem- 
bers of the body. Faces never lie, it is said. No man 
need be deceived, who will study the changes of expres- 
sion. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of 
truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has 
base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy and some- 
times asquint. 

. I have heard an experienced counsellor say, that he 
never feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does 
not believe in his heart that his client ought to have a 
verdict. If he does not believe it, his unbelief will appear 
to the jury, despite all his protestations, and will become 
their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, 
of whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind 
wherein the artist was when he made it. That which we 
do not believe, we cannot adequately say, though we may 
repeat the words never so often. It was this conviction 
which Swedenborg expressed, when he described a group 
of persons in the spiritual world endeavoring in vain to 
articulate a proposition which they did not believe ; but 
they could not, though they twisted and folded their lips 
even to indignation. 

A man passes for that he is worth. Yery idle is all 
curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all 
fear of remaining unknown is not less so. If a man know 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 127 

that lie can do anything, — that he can do it better than 
any one else, — he has a pledge of the acknowledgment 
of that fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment- 
days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every 
action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped. In every 
troop of boys that whoop and run in each yard and 
square, a new-comer is as well and accurately weighed in 
the course of a few days, and stamped with his right 
number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his 
strength, speed, and temper. A stranger comes from a 
distant school, with better dress, with trinkets in his 
pockets, with airs and pretensions: an older boy says 
to himself, * It 's of no use ; we shall find him out to- 
morrow.' * What has he done ? ' is the divine question 
which searches men, and transpierces every false reputa- 
tion. A fop may sit in any cliair of the world, nor be 
distinguished for his hour from Homer and Washington ; 
but there need never be any doubt concerning the respec- 
tive ability of human beings. ^ Pretension may sit still, 
but cannot act.- Pretension never feigned an act of real 
greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nor drove 
back Xerxes, nor Christianized the world, nor abolished 
slavery. 

'As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much 
goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. 
All the devils respect virtue. The high, the generous, 
the self-devoted sect will always instruct and command 
mankind.*^ Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never 
a magnanimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart 
to greet and accept it unexpectedly. A man passes for 
that he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face. 



128 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

on his form, on liis fortunes, in letters of light. Conceal- 
ment avails him nothing ; boasting, nothing. There is 
confession in the glances of our eyes ; in our smiles ; in 
salutations ; and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs 
liim, mars all his good impression. Men know not why 
they do not trust him ; but they do not trust him. Ilis 
vice glasses his eye-, cuts lines of mean expression in his 
cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the 
back of the head, and writes fool ! fool ! on the fore- 
head of a king. 

If you would not be known to do anything, never do 
it. A man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, 
but every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a 
solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A 
broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and 
the want of due knowledge, — all blab. Can a cook, a 
Cliiffiuch, an lachimo, be mistaken for Zeno or Paul? 
Confucius exclaimed, '' How can a man be concealed ! 
How can a man be concealed ! " 

On the other hand, the hero fears not, that, if he with- 
hold the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwit- 
nessed and unloved. • One knows it, — himself, — and is 
pledged by it to sweetness of peace, and to nobleness of 
aim, which will prove in the end a better proclamation of 
it than the relating of the incident.*" Virtue is the adher- 
ence in action to the nature of things, and the nature 
of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual 
substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime pro- 
priety God is described as saying, I AM. 

The lesson which these observations convey is. Be, and 
not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 129 



^- 



notliingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let 
us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low. in 
the Lord's power, and learn that truth alone makes rich 
and great.- 

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for 
not having visited him, and waste bis time and deface 
your own act ? Visit liim now. Let him feel that the 
higliest love has come to see him, in thee, its lowest or- 
gan. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by 
secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or 
complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore ? 
Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light, and 
not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men 
are apologies for men ; they bow the head, excuse them- 
selves with prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances, 
because the substance is not.-^ 

We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship 
of magnitude. We call tlie poet inactive, because he is 
not a president, a merchant, or a porter. "^We adore an 
institution, and do not see that it is founded on a thouglit 
which we have. ^ But real action is in silent moments. 
The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our 
choice of a calhng, our marriage, our acquisition of an 
office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the way- 
side as we walk ; in a thought which revises our entire 
manner of life, and says, " Thus hast thou done, but it 
were better thus." And all our after years, like menials, 
serve and wait on this, and, according to their ability, exe- 
cute its will. This revisal or correction is a constant force, 
which, as a tendency, reaches through our lifetime. The 
object of the man, the aim of these moments, is to make 
6* 1 



130 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

dayliglit shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse 
his whole being without obstruction, so that, on what 
point soever of his doing your eye falls, it shall report 
truly of his character, whether it be his diet, his house,, 
his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his 
opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, but heteroge- 
neous, and the ray does not traverse ; there are no thor- 
ough lights; but the eye of the beholder is puzzled, 
detecting many unlike tendencies, and a life not yet at 
one. 

Why should we make it a point with our false modesty 
to disparage that man we are, and that form of being as- 
signed to us ? A good man is contented. I love and 
honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminon- 
das. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour, 
than the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, 
excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, * He acted, 
and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good, when the 
need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, 
if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with 
joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, 
and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude. 
Why should we be busybodies and superserviceable ? 
Action and inaction are alike to the true. 'One piece of 
llie tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper 
of a bridge ; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both. 

I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am 
here certainly shows me that the soul had need of an or- 
gan here. Shall I not assume the post ? Shall I skulk 
and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies 
and vain modesty, and imagine my being here imperti- 



SPIRITUAL LAWS. 131 

neut ? less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being 
there ? and that the soul did not know its own needs ? 
Besides, without any reasoning on the matter, I have no 
discontent. The good soul nourishes me, and unlocks 
new magazines of power and enjoyment to me every day. 
I will not meanly decline the immensity of good, because 
I have heard that it has come to others in another 
shape. 

Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of 
Action ? 'T is a trick of the senses, — no more. We 
know that the ancestor of every action is a thought. 
The poor mind does not seem to itself to be anything, 
unless it have an outside badge, — some Gentoo diet, or 
Quaker coat, or Calvinistic prayer-meeting, or philan- 
thropic society, or a great donation, or a high office, or, 
any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it 
is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, 
and is Nature. To think is to act. 

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own 
so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least 
admits of being inflated with the celestial air until it 
eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace by 
fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gad- 
ding into the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian 
history, before I have justified myself to my benefactors ? 
^^ How dare I read Washington's campaigns, when I have 
not answered the letters of my own correspondents ? Is 
not that a just objection to much of our reading ? It is 
a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our 
neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting, — 
"He knew not what to say, and so he swore." 



132 SPIRITUAL LAWS. 

I may say it of our preposterous use of books, — He 
knew not what to do, and so he read. I can think of 
nothing to fill my time with, and I find tlie Life of Brant. 
It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brant, or 
to General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My 
time should be as good as their time, — my facts, my 
net of relations, as good as theirs, or either of theirs, 
llather let me do my work so well that other idlers, if 
they choose, may compare my texture with the texture 
of these and find it identical with the best. 

This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and 
Pericles, this under-estimate of our own, comes from a 
neglect of the fact of an identical nature. Bonaparte 
knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same 
way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good 
poet, the good player. The poet uses the names of 
Caesar, of Tamerlane, of Bonduca, of Belisarius ; the 
painter uses the conventional story of the Virgin Mary, 
of Paul, of Peter. He does not, therefore, defer to the 
nature of these accidental men, of these stock heroes. 
If the poet write a true drama, then he is Csesar, and 
not the player of Csesar; then the selfsame strain of 
thought, emotion as pure, wit as subtle, motions as swift, 
mounting, extravagant, and a heart as great, self-suffi- 
cing, dauntless, which on the waves of its love and hope 
can uplift all that is reckoned solid and precious in the 
world, — palaces, gardens, money, navies, kingdoms, — 
marking its own incomparable worth by the slight it 
casts on these gauds of men, — these all are his, and by 
the power of these he rouses the nations. ■ Let a man 
believe in God, and not in names and places and persons."^ 



SPIKITUAL LAWS. 133 

Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, 
poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out 
to service, and sweep cliambers and scour floors, and its 
effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or liid, but to 
sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme and beau- 
tiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all 
people will get mops and brooms ; until, lo ! suddenly the 
great soul has enshrined itself in some other form, and 
done some other deed, and that is now the flower and 
head of all living nature. 

We are the photometers, we the irritable gold-leaf 
and tin-foil that measure the accumulations of the subtle 
element. We know the authentic effects of the true fire 
through every one of its million disguises. 



LOVE. 



" I WAS as a gem concealed ; 
Me my burning ray revealed." 

Koran. 



LOVE, 



Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfil- 
ments ; each of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, 
uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in the first sentiment 
of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which shall 
lose all particular regards in its general light. The in- 
troduction to this felicity is in a private and tender rela- 
tion of one to one, which is the enchantment of human 
life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, 
seizes on a man at one period, and works a revolution in 
his mind and body ; unites him to his race, pledges him 
to the domestic and civic relations, carries him w^ith new 
sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the senses, 
opens the imagination, adds to his character heroic and 
sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives perma- 
nence to human society. 

The natural association of the sentiment of love with 
the heyday of the blood seems to require, that in order 
to portray it in vivid tints, which every youth and maid 
should confess to be true to their throbbing experience, 
one must not be too old. The delicious fancies of 
youth reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as 
chilKng with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And, 
therefore, I know I incur the imputation of unnecessary 



138 LOVE. 

hardness and stoicism from those who compose the Court 
and Parliament of Love. But from these formidable cen- 
sors I shall appeal to mj seniors. For it is to be con- 
sidered that this passion of which we speak, though it 
begin with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather 
suffers no one wljo is truly its servant to grow old, but 
makes the aged participators of it, not less than the 
tender maiden, though in a different and nobler sort. 
For it is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the nar- 
row nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering 
spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges 
until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and 
women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up 
the whole world and all nature with its generous flames. 
It matters not, therefore, whether we attempt to describe 
the passion at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He 
who paints it at the first period will lose some of its 
later, he who paints it at the last, some of its earlier 
traits. Only it is to be hoped that, by patience and the 
Muses' aid, we may attain to that inward view of the 
law, which shall describe a truth ever young and beauti- 
ful, so central that it shall commend itself to the eye, at 
whatever angle beholden. 

And the first condition is, that we must leave a too 
close and lingering adherence to facts, and study the 
sentiment as it appeared in hope and not in history. 
Eor each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured, 
as the life of man is not, to his imagination. Each man 
sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, 
whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any 
man go back to those delicious relations which make the 



LOVE. 139 

beauty of his life, wliich have given hini sincerest instruc- 
tion and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. Alas ! 
I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter 
in mature life the remembrances of budding joy, and 
cover every beloved name. Everything is beautiful seen 
from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is 
sour, if seen as experience. Details are melancholy; the 
plan is seemly and noble. In the actual world — the 
painful kingdom of time and place — dwell care, and 
canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is im- 
mortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the Muses 
sing. But grief cleaves to names, and persons, and the 
partial interests of to-day and yesterday. 

The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion 
which this topic of personal relations usurps in the con- 
versation of society. What do we wish to know of any 
worthy person so much, as how he has sped in the his- 
tory of this sentiment ? What books in the circulating 
libraries circulate ? How we glow over these novels of 
passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth 
and nature ! And what fastens attention, in the inter- 
course of life, like any passage betraying aifection 
between two parties ? Perhaps we never saw them be- 
fore, and never shall meet them again. But we see them 
exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are 
no longer strangers. We imderstand them, and take the 
warmest interest in the development of the romance. 
^All mankind love a lover. /^ The earliest demonstrations 
of complacency and kindness are nature's most winning 
pictures. It is the dawn of civility and grace in the 
coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls 



140 LOVE. 

about the scliool-liouse door ; but to-day lie comes run- 
ning into the entry, and meets one fair child disposing 
her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and instantly 
it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infi- 
nitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of 
girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances 
him ; and these two little neighbors, that were so close 
just now, have learned to respect each other's person- 
ality. Or who can avert his eyes from the engaging, 
half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who go into 
the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of 
paper, and talk half an hour about nothing with the 
broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the village 
they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and 
without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of 
woman flows out in this pretty gossip. The girls may 
have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between 
them and the good boy the most agreeable, confiding re- 
lations, what with their fun and their earnest, about 
Edgar, and Jonas, and Almira, and who was invited to 
the party, and who danced at the dancing-school, and 
when the singing-school would begin, and other nothings 
concerning which the parties cooed. By and by that boy 
wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know 
wliere to find a sincere and sweet mate, witliout any risk 
such as Milton deplores as incident to scholars and great 
men. 

I have been told, that in some public discourses of 
mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly 
cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink 
at the remembrance of such disparaging words. Por 



LOVE. 141 

persons are love*s world, and the coldest philosopher 
' cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering 
here in nature to the power of love, without being 
tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derog- 
atory to the social instincts. Eor, though the celestial 
rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of 
tender age, and although a beauty overpowering all anal- 
ysis or comparison, and putting us quite beside ourselves, 
we can seldom see after thirty years, yet the remem- 
brance of these visions outlasts all other remembrances, 
and is a wreath of flowers on the oldest brows. But 
here is a strange fact ; it may seem to many men, in re- 
vising their experience, that they have no fairer page in 
their life's book than the delicious memory of some pas- 
sages wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft 
surpassing the deep attraction of its own truth to a par- 
cel of accidental and trivial circumstances. In looking 
backward, they may find that several things which were 
not the charm have more reality to this groping memory 
than the charm itself which embalmed them. But be 
our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever 
forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and 
brain, which created all things new; which was the 
dawn in him of music, poetry, and art ; which made the 
face of nature radiant with purple light ; the morning 
and the night varied enchantments ; when a single tone 
of one voice could make the heart bound, and the most 
trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in 
the amber of memory ; when he became all eye when one 
was present, and all memory when one was gone ; when 
tlie youth becomes a watcher of windows, and studious 



142 LOVE. 

of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage ; 
when no place is too solitary, and none too silent, for 
him who has richer company and sweeter conversation in 
his new thoughts, than any old friends, though best and 
purest, can give him ; for the figures, the motions, the 
words of the beloved object are not like other images 
written in water, but, as Plutarch said, "enamelled in 
fire," and make the study of midnight. 

*' Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art, 
Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving 
heart." 

In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at 
the recollection of days when happiness was not happy 
enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain 
and fear ; for he touched the secret of the matter, who 
said of love, 

" All other pleasures are not worth its pains " ; 

and w^hen the day was not long enough, but the night, 
too, must be consumed in keen recollections ; when the 
head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous 
deed it resolved on ; when the moonlight was a pleasing 
fever, and the stars were letters, and the flowers ciphers, 
and the air was coined into song; when all business 
seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women 
running to and fro in the streets mere pictures. 

The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It 
makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows 
conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings 
now to his heart and soul. The notes are almost articu- 



LOVE. 143 

late. The clouds have faces as he looks on them. The 
trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping 
flowers have grown intelligent ; and he almost fears to 
trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. 
Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green soli- 
tude he finds a dearer home than with men. 

" Fountain-heads and pathless groves, 
Places which pale passion loves. 
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
Are safely housed, save hats and owls, 
A midnight hell, a passing groan, — 
These are the sounds we feed upon.'* 

Behold there in the wood the fine madman. He is a 
palace of sweet sounds and sights ; he dilates ; he is twice 
a man ; he walks with arms akimbo ; he soliloquizes ; he 
accosts the grass and the trees ; he feels the blood of the 
violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins ; and he talks 
with the brook that wets his foot. 

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural 
beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a fact 
often observed, that men have written good verses under 
the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under 
any other circumstances. 

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It 
expands the sentiment ; it makes the clown gentle, and 
gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject 
it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so 
only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In 
giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. 
He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener 



144 LOVE. 

purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. 
He does not longer appertain to liis family and society; 
he is somewliat ; ^^ is a person ; ^<? is a soul. 

And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of 
that influence which is thus potent over the human youth. 
Beauty, whose revelation to man we now celebrate, wel- 
come as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which 
pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems 
sufficient to itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to 
his fancy poor and solitary. Like a tree in flower, so 
much soft, budding, informing loveliness is society for 
itself, and she teaches his eye Avliy Beauty was pictured 
with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her exist- 
ence makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all 
other persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, 
she indemnifies him by carrying out her own being into 
somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that the maiden 
stands to him for a representative of all select things and 
virtues. For that reason, the lover never sees personal 
resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. 
His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her 
sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees 
no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond 
mornings, to rainbows, and the song of birds. 

The ancients called beauty the floAvering of virtue. 
Who can analyze the nameless charm which glances from 
one and another face and form ? We are touched with 
emotions of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot 
find whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, 
points. It is destroyed for the imagination by any at- 
tempt to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to 



LOVE. 145 

any relations of friendship or love known and described in 
society, but, as it seems to me, to a quite other and unat- 
tainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy and 
sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and foreshow. 
We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline 
doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it 
resembles the most excellent things, which all have this 
rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation 
and use. What else did Jeau Paul Eichter signify, when 
he said to music, " Away ! away ! thou speakest to me 
of things which in all my endless life I have not found, 
and shall not find." The same fluency may be observed 
in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is then 
beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it 
is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined 
by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active 
imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act 
of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always rep- 
resented in a transition from that which is representable 
to the senses, to that which is not. Then first it ceases 
to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And 
of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and 
satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new 
endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning it, Landor 
inquires " whether it is not to be referred to some purer 
state of sensation and existence." 

In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming 
and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end ; when it 
becomes a story without an end ; when it suggests gleams 
and visions, and not earthly satisfactions ; when it makes 
the beholder feel his unworthiness ; when he cannot feel 

VOL. I. 7 J 



146 LOVE. 

his right to it, though he were Csesar; he cannot feel 
more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors 
of a sunset. 

Hence arose the saying, " If I love you, what is that 
to you ? " We say so, because we feel that what we love 
is not in your will, but above it. It is not you but your 
radiance. It is that which you know not in yourself, 
and can never know. 

- This agrees well with that high philosophy of Beauty 
which the ancient writers delighted in ; for they said that 
the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went roaming 
up and down in quest of that other world of its own, out 
of which it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the 
light of the natural sun, and unable to see any other 
objects than those of this world, which are but shadows 
of real things. Therefore, the Deity sends the glory of 
youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful 
bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and 
fair ; and the man beholding such a person in the female 
sex runs to her, and finds the highest joy in contem- 
plating the form, movement, and intelligence of this 
person, because it suggests to him the presence of that 
which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the 
beauty. .__ 

If, however, from too mucli conversing with material 
objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction 
in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow ; body being 
unable to fulfil the promise which beauty holds out ; but 
if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions 
which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through 
the body, and falls to admire strokes of character, and the 



LOVE. 147 

lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and 
their actions, then they pass to the true palace of beauty, 
more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love 
extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the 
fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and 
hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself 
excellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes 
to a wanner love of these nobilities, and a quicker appre- 
hension of them. Then he passes from loving them in 
one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul 
only the door through which he enters to the society of 
all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his 
mate, he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint, 
which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is 
able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they 
are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and 
hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and 
comfort in curing the same. And, beholding in many 
souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in 
each soul that which is divine from the taint which it 
has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the 
highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, 
by steps on this ladder of created souls. 

Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love 
in all ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If 
Plato, Plutarch, and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, 
Angelo, and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in op- 
position and rebuke to that subterranean prudence whicli 
presides at marriages with words that take hold of the 
U])per world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar, so 
that its gravest discourse has a savor of hams and pow- 



148 LOVE. 

dering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into 
the education of young women, and withers the hope and 
affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage sig- 
nifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's 
life has no other aim. 

But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one 
scene in our play. In the procession of the soul from 
within outward, it enlarges its circles ever, Hke the peb- 
ble thrown into the pond, or the light proceeding from 
an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on things 
nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domes- 
tics, on the house, and yard, and passengers, on the circle 
of household acquaintance, on politics, and geography, 
and history. But things are ever grouping themselves 
according to higher or more interior laws. Neighbor- 
hood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their 
power over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the 
longing for harmony between the soul and the circum- 
stance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, predominate 
later, and the step backward from the higher to the lower 
relations is impossible. Thus even love, which is the 
deification of persons, must become more impersonal 
every day. Of this at first it gives no hint. Little think 
the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other 
across crowded rooms, with eyes so full of mutual intelli- 
gence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed 
from this new, quite external stimulus. The work of 
vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and 
leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to 
acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to 
plighting troth, and marriage. Passion beholds its object 



LOVE. 149 

as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the 
body is wholly ensouled. 

" Her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought. 
That one might almost say her body thought." 

Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make 
the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, 
asks no more, than Juliet, — than Eomeo. Night, day, 
studies, talents, kingdoms, religion, are all contained in 
this form full of soul, in this soul which is all form. The 
lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in com- 
parisons of their regards. When alone, they solace them- 
selves with the remembered image of the other. Does 
that other see the same star, the same melting cloud, read 
the same book, feel the same emotion, that now delight 
me ? They try and weigh their affection, and, addijig up 
costly advantages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult 
in discovering that willingly, joyfully, they would give all 
as a ransom for the beautiful, the beloved head, not one 
hair of which shall be harmed. But the lot of humanity 
is on these children. Danger, sorrow, and pain arrive to 
them, as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants with 
Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate. The union 
which is thus effected, and which adds a new value to 
every atom in nature, for it transmutes every thread 
throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray, 
and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element, is yet a 
temporary state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, 
protestations, nor even home in another heart, content 
the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself at last 



150 LOVE. 

f^om these endearments, as toys, and puts on tlie harness, 
and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul which is 
in the soul of each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects 
incongruities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior of 
the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain. 
Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of 
loveliness, signs of virtue ; and these virtues are there, 
however eclipsed. They appear and reappear, and con- 
tinue to attract ; but the regard changes, quits the sign, 
and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded 
affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game 
of permutation and combination of all possible positions 
of the parties, to employ all the resources of each, and 
acquaint each with the strength and weakness of the 
other. For it is the nature and end of this relation, that 
they should represent the human race to each other. All 
that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is 
cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman. 

" The person love does to us fit, 
Like manna, has the taste of all in it." 

The world rolls ; the circumstances vary every hour. 
The angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at 
the windows, and the gnomes and vices also. By all the 
virtues they are united. If there be virtue, all the vices 
are known as such ; they confess and flee. Their once 
flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and, 
losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a 
thorough good understanding. They resign each other, 
without complaint, to the good offices which man and 
woman are severally appointed to discharge in time, and 



LOVE. 151 

excliaiige the passion wliicli once could not lose sight of 
its object, for a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether 
present or absent, of each other's designs. At last they 
discover that all which at first drew them together, — 
those once sacred features, that magical play of charms, 
— was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaifold- 
ing by which the house was built ; and the purification 
of the intellect aud the heart, from year to year, is the 
real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and 
wholly above their consciousness. Looking at these aims 
with which two persons, a man and a woman, so variously 
and correlatively gifted, are shut up in one house to 
spend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not 
wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies 
this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with 
which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature, 
and intellect, and art emulate each other in the gifts and 
the melody they bring to the epithalamium. 

Tlius are we put in training for a love which knows 
not sex, nor person, nor partiaHty, but which seeks virtue 
and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue 
and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby 
learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often 
made to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. 
Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affec- 
tions change, as the objects of thought do. There are 
moments when the affections rule and absorb the man, 
and make his happiness dependent on a person or per- 
sons. But in health the mind is presently seen again, — 
its overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable 
lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us 



152 LOVE. 

as clouds, must lose their finite cliaracter and blend with 
God, to attain their own perfection. But Ave need not 
fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the 
soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which 
is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be 
succeeded and supplanted only by what is uiore beautiful, 
and so on forever. 



FKIENDSHIP. 



A RUDDY drop of manly blood 

The surging sea outweighs, 

The world uncertain comes and goes. 

The lover rooted stays. 

1 fancied he was fled, 

And, after many a year. 

Glowed unexhausted kindliness 

Like daily sunrise there. 

My careful heart was free again, — 

O friend, my bosom said. 

Through thee alone the sky is arched, 

Through thee the rose is red. 

All things through thee take nobler form. 

And look beyond the earth. 

The mill-round of our fate appears 

A sun-path in thy worth. 

Me too thy nobleness has taught 

To master my despair ; 

The fountains of my hidden life 

Are through thy friendship fair. 



7* 



FRIENDSHIP. 



Vv E have a great deal more kindness tlian is ever 
spoken. Maugre all tlie selfishness that chills like east- 
winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with 
an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons 
we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom 
yet we honor, and who honor us ! How many we see in 
the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, 
we warmly rejoice to be with ! Read the language of 
these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth. 

Tlie effect of the indulgence of this human affection is 
a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common 
speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency 
which are felt towards others are likened to the material 
effects of fire ; so sw^ift, or much more swift, more active, 
more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From 
the highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree 
of good-will, they make the sweetness of life. 

Our intellectual and active powers increase with our af- 
fection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years 
of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought 
or happy expression ; but it is necessary to write a letter 
to a friend, — and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts 
invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. 



156 lUlIENDSHIP. 

See, in any house where virtue and self-respect abide, the 
palpitation which the approach of a stranger causes. A 
commended stranger is expected and announced, and an 
uneasiness betwixt pleasure and pain invades all the hearts 
of a household. His arrival almost brings fear to the 
good hearts that would welcome him. The house is 
dusted, all things Hj into their places, the old coat is ex- 
changed for the new, and they must get up a dinner if 
they can. Of a commended stranger, only the good re- 
port is told by others, only the good and new is heard by 
us. He stands to us for humanity. He is what we wish. 
Having imagined and invested him, w^e ask how we should 
stand related in conversation and action with such a man, 
and are uneasy with fear. The same idea exalts conver- 
sation with him. We talk better than we are wont. 
We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our 
dumb devil has taken leave for the time. Eor long hours 
we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich com- 
munications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, 
so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaint- 
ance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. 
But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partial- 
ities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it 
is all over. He has heard the first, the last, and best he 
will ever hear from us. He is no stranger now. Vul- 
garity, ignorance, misapprehension, are old acquaintances. 
Now, when he comes, he may find the order, the dress, 
and the dinner, — but the throbbing of the heart, and the 
communications of the soul, no more. 

What is so pleasant as tliese jets of affection wliich 
make a young world for me again ? What so delicious 



FRIENDSHIP. 157 

as a just and firm encounter of two, in a tliouglit, in a 
feeling ? How beautiful, on their approach to this beat- 
ing heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true ! 
The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is meta- 
morphosed ; there is no winter, and no night ; all trage- 
dies, all ennuis, vanish, — all duties even ; nothing fills 
the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of be- 
loved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere 
in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would 
be content and cheerful alone for a thousand 3^ears. 

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my 
friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the 
Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts ? 
I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so 
ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the 
noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. 
Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a 
possession for all time. Nor is Nature so poor but she 
gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave social 
threads of our own, a new web of relations ; and, as many 
thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall 
by and by stand in a new world of our own creation, and 
no longer strangers and pilgrims in a traditionary globe. 
My friends have come to me unsought. The great God 
gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity 
of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I but the 
Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick 
walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circum- 
stance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many 
one. Higlf thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry 
out the world for me to new and noble depths, and en- 



158 FRIENDSHIP. 

large the meaning of all my tliouglits. These are new 
poetry of the first Bard, — poetry without stop, — hymn, 
ode, and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses 
chanting still. Will these, too, separate themselves from 
me again, or some of them ? I know not, but I fear it 
not ; for my relation to them is so pure, that we hold by 
simple affinity, and the Genius of my life being thus social, 
the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever is 
as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be. 

I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this 
point. It is almost dangerous to me to "crush the 
sweet poison of misused wine" of the affections. A new 
person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. 
I have often had fine fancies about persons which have 
given me delicious hours ; but the joy ends in the day ; 
it yields no fruit. Thought is not born of it ; my action 
is very little modified. I must feel pride in my friend's 
accomplishments as if they were mine, — and a property 
in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as 
the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. 
We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His 
goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature 
finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his, — his 
name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, — 
fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and 
larger from his mouth. 

Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not with- 
out their analogy in the ebb and flow of love. Friend- 
ship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be 
believed.^ The lover, beholding his maiden, 4ialf knows 
that she is not verily that which he worships ; and in the 



FRIENDSHIP. 159 

golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with shades 
of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on 
our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards 
worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine 
inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men 
as it respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie 
the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we 
fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foun- 
dation of this Elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as 
the things I see ? If I am, I shall not fear to know them 
for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful 
than their appearance, though it needs finer organs for 
its apprehension. The root of the plant is not unsightly 
to science, though for chaplets and festoons we cut the 
stem short. And I must hazard the production of the 
bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should 
prove an Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who 
stands united with his thought conceives magnificently of 
himself. He is conscious of a universal success, even 
though bought by uniform particular failures. No ad- 
vantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match 
for him. I cannot choose but rely on my own poverty 
more than on your wealth. I cannot make your con- 
sciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star dazzles ; 
the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you 
say of the admirable parts and tried temper of the party 
you praise, but I see well that for all his purple cloaks I 
shall not like him, unless he is at last a poor Greek like 
me. I cannot deny it, friend, that the vast shadow of 
the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted 
immensity, — thee, also, compared with whom all else is 



160 FRIENDSHIP. 

sliadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is, 
— thou art not my soul, but a picture and effigy of that. 
Thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art seiz- 
ing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth 
friends as tlie tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by 
the germination of new buds, extrudes tlie old leaf? 
The law of nature is alternation fprevermore. Eacli elec- 
trical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs 
itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self- 
acquaintance or solitude ; and it goes alone for a season, • 
that it may exalt its conversation or society. This 
method betrays itself along the whole history of our per- 
sonal relations. The instinct of affection revives the 
hope of union with our mates, and the returning sense of 
insulation recalls us from the chase. Thus every man 
passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he 
should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter 
like this to each new candidate for his love. 

Dear Fjiiend : — 

If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to 
match my mood with thine, I should never think again 
of trifles in relation to thy comings and goings. I am 
not very wise; my moods are quite attainable; and I 
respect thy genius ; it is to me as yet unfathomed ; yet 
dare 1 not presume in thee a perfect intelligence of me, 
and so thou art to me a delicious torment. Thine ever, 
or never. 

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curi- 
osity, and not for life. They are not to be indulged. 



rHIENBSHIP. 161 

This is to weave cobweb, and not clotli. Our friendships 
hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have 
made tliem a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the 
tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship 
are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of 
nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and 
petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatcli 
at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which 
many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek 
our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion 
which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We 
are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as 
soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry 
into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. 
All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst 
the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the 
beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. 
What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even, 
of the virtuous and gifted ! After interviews have been 
compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented 
presently by bafiled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apa- 
thies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the 
heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not 
play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude. 

I ought to be equal to every relation. It makes no 
difference how many friends I have, and what content I 
can find in conversing with each, if there be one to whom 
I am not equal. If I have shrunk unequal from one con- 
test, the joy I find iu all the rest becomes mean and cow- 
ardly. I should hate myself, if then I made my other 
friends my asylum. 

K 



162 FRIENDSHIP. 

" The valiant warrior famoused for fight. 
After a hundred victoTies, once foiled, 
Is from the hook of honor razed quite, 
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." 

Our impatience is thus sharply rebuked. Bash fulness 
and apathy are a tough husk, in whicli a delicate organi- 
zation is protected from premature ripening. It would 
be lost, if it knew itself before any of the best souls were 
yet ripe enough to know and own it. E-espect the natur- 
langsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, 
and works in duration, in which Alps and Andes come 
and go as rainbows. The good spirit of our life has no 
heaven which is the price of rashness. Love, which is 
the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total 
worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in 
our regards, but the austerest worth ; let us approach 
our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his 
heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his 
foundations. 

The attractions of this subject are not to be resisted, 
and I leave, for the time, all account of subordinate social 
benefit, to speak of that select and sacred relation which 
is a kind of absolute, and which even leaves the language 
of love suspicious and common, so much is this purer, 
and nothing is so much divine. 

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with 
roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass 
threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. 
Tor now, after so many ages of experience, what do we 
know of nature, or of ourselves ? Not one step has man 
taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. 



FRIENDSHIP. 163 

In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe 
of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which 
I draw from this alliance with my brother's sonl, is the 
nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the 
husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a 
friend ! It might well be built, like a festal bower or 
arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know 
the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law ! He 
who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes 
up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first- 
born of the world are the competitors. He proposes 
himself for contests where Time, Want, Danger, are in 
the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in 
his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty 
from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune 
may be present or absent, but all the speed in that con- 
test depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of 
trifles. There are two elements that go to the composi- 
tion of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no 
superiority in either, no reason why either should be first 
named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom 
I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am 
arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, 
that I may drop even those undermost garments of dis- 
simulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men 
never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity 
and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets 
another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems 
and authority, only to the highest rank, that being per- 
mitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court 
or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the 



1§4 FRIENDSHIP. 

' entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We 
parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by com- 
pliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We 
cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. 
I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast 
off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and com- 
monplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he 
encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. 
At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. 
But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for 
some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of 
bringing every man of his acquaintance into true rela- 
tions with him. No man would think of speaking falsely 
with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets 
or reading-rooms.^' But every man was constrained by so 
much sincerity to the like plain-dealing, and what love of 
nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he 
did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows 
not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand 
in true relations with men in a false age is worth a 
fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. 
Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — re- 
quires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, 
some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head, that 
is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation 
with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not 
my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertain- 
ment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A 
friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who 
alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I 
can afiirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now 



FRIENDSHIP. 165 

the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and 
cniiosity, reiterated in a foreign form ; so that a friend 
may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. 

The other element of friendship is tenderness. We 
are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by 
pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by ad- 
miration, by every circumstance, and badge and triile, 
but we can scarce believe that so much character can 
subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another 
be so blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer him 
tenderness ? When a man becomes dear to me, I have 
touched tlie goal of fortune. I find very little written 
directly to the heart of this matter in books. And yet 
I liave one text which I cannot choose but remember. 
My author says : " I offer myself faintly and bluntly to 
those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least 
to him to whom I am the most devoted." I wish that 
friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and elo- 
quence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it 
vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a 
citizen, before it is quite a cherub. We. chide the citi- 
zen because he makes love a commodity. It is an ex- 
change of gifts, of useful loans ; it is good neighborhood; 
it watches with the sick ; it holds the pall at the funeral; 
and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the 
t:3lation. But though we cannot find the god under this 
disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot 
forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does 
not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of 
justice, punctuality, fidelity, and pity. 1 hate the pros- 
titution of the name of friendship to signify modish and 



166 FRIENDSHIP. 

worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of plough- 
boys and tm-pedlers, to the silken and perfumed amity 
which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous 
display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best 
taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most 
strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any 
of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort 
through all the relations and passages of life and death. 
It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country 
rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, ship- 
wreck, p^'^""'.^, c*u(l persecution. It keeps company 
with I. lie sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. 
We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and 
offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom, 
and unity. It should never fall into something usual 
and settled, but should be alert and inventive, and add 
rhyme and reason to what was drudgery. 

Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and 
costly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted, 
and withal so circumstanced (for even in that particular, 
a poet says, love demands that the parties be altogether 
paired), that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured. 
It cannot subsist in its perfection, say some of those who 
are learued in this warm lore of the heart, betwixt more 
than two. I am not quite so strict in my terms, perhaps 
because I have never known so high a fellowship as 
others. I please my imagination more with a circle of 
godlike men and women variously related to each other, 
and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I 
fiud this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, 
which is the practice and consummation of friendship. 



FRIENDSHIP. 167 

Do not mix waters too niucli. The best mix as ill as 
good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering 
discourse at several times with two several men, but let 
all three of you come together, and you shall not have 
one new and hearty word. "^Two may talk and one may 
hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of 
the most sincere and searching sort.^ In good company, 
there is never such discourse between two, across the 
table, as lakes place when you leave them alone. In 
good company, the individuals merge their egotism into 
a social soul exactly coextensive witoL.iVit? several con- 
sciousnesses there present. No partialities of tlicnd to 
friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to hus- 
band, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he 
may then speak who can sail on the common thought of 
the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this 
convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high 
freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute 
running of two souls into one. 

No two men but, being left alone witli each other, 
enter into simpler relations. Yet it is affinity that deter- 
mines which two shall converse. Unrelated men give 
little joy to each other; will never suspect the latent 
powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent 
for conversation, as if it were a permanent property in 
some individuals. Conversation is an evanescent rela- 
tion, — no more. A man is reputed to have thought 
and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to 
his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with 
as much reason as they would blame the insignificance 
of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the iiour. 



168 FRIENDSHIP. 

Among those wlio enjoy his thought, he will regain his 
tongue. . 

Eriendsliip requires that rare mean betwixt likeness 
and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of 
power and of consent in the other party. Let me be 
alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend 
should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. 
I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. 
Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only 
joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mme is 
mine, ' I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, 
or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of con- 
cession.^ Better be a nettle in the side of your friend 
than his echo. The condition which high friendship 
demands is ability to do without it. That high office 
requires great and sublime parts. There must be very 
two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance 
of two large, formidable natures mutually beheld, mutu- 
ally feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity 
which beneath these disparities unites them. 

He only is fit for tiiis society who is magnanimous ; 
who is sure that greatness and goodness are always econ- 
omy ; who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. 
Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the dia- 
mond its ages to grow% nor expect to accelerate the 
births of the eternal, friendship demands a religious 
treatment. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends 
are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat 
your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits that 
are not yours, and that you cannot honor, if you must 
needs hold him close to your person. Stand aside ; give 



FHIENDSHIP. 169 

tliese merits room ; let them mount and expand. Are 
you tlie friend of your friend's buttons, or of his thought? 
J To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand 
particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground, i 
Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, 
and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure, instead 
of the noblest benefit. 

*" Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long pro- 
bation. Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful 
souls by intruding on theui ? Why insist on rash per- 
sonal relations with your friend ? Why go to his house, 
and know his mother and brother and sisters ? Why be 
visited by him at your own ? Are these things material 
to our covenant ? Leave this touching and clawing. Let 
him be to me a spirit/ A message, a thought, a sincerity, 
a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. 
I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences 
from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my 
friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as na- 
ture itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in 
comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the 
liorizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the 
brook ? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard. 
That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien 
and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather 
fortify and enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish 
him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell them all. 
Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to thee for- 
ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly re- 
vered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown 
and cast aside, ' The hues of the opal, the light of the 

VOL. I. 8 • 



170 FRIENDSHIP. 

diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye is too near. To 
my friend I write a letter, and from him I receive a let- 
ter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is 
a spiritual gift worthy of him to give, and of me to re- 
ceive. It profanes nobody. . In these warm lines the 
heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and 
pour out tlie prophecy of a godlier existence than all 
the annals of heroism have yet made good. 

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not 
to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for 
its opening. vVe must be our own before we can be 
another's.' Tliere is at least this satisfaction in crime, 
according to the Latin proverb : you can speak to your 
accomplice on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, cequat. 
To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. 
Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my 
judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep 
peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, 
in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world. 

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what 
grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may 
liear the whisper of the^ods. Let us not interfere. Who 
set you to cast about what you should say to the select 
souls, or liow to say anything to such ? No matter how 
ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are 
innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to 
say aught is to be frivolous. ^ Wait, and thy heart shall 
speak.^ Wait until the necessary and everlasting over- 
powers you, until day and night avail themselves of your 
lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue ; the only way 
to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer 



FRIENDSHIP. 171 

a man by getting into his liouse. If unlike, liis soul 
only flees the taster from you, and you shall never catch 
a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off, and 
they repel us; why should we intrude? Late, — very 
late, — we perceive that no arrangements, no introduc- 
tions, no consuetudes or habits of society, would be of 
any avail to establish us in such relations with them as 
we desire, — but solely the uprise of nature in us to the 
same degree it is in them ; then shall we meet as water 
with water ; and if we should not meet them then, we 
shall not want them, for we are already they. In the 
last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own 
worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes ex- 
changed names with their friends, as if they would sig- 
nify that in their friend each loved his own soul. 

The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course 
the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We 
walk alone in the world. Priends, such as we desire, are ^^ 
dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the ivv^^ 
faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the uni- -^^^^ 
versal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, ^ . 
which can love us, and which we can love. We may con- ' ' 
gratulate ourselves that the period of nonage, of follies, 
of blunders, and of shame is passed in solitude, and 
when we are finished men, we shall grasp heroic hands in 
heroic hands. Only be admonished by what you already '"'^ (^ 
see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap per- '-^^^ 
sons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience be- 
trays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God 
attends. ^By persisting in your path, though you for- 
feit the little you gain the great.^ You demonstrate your- 



V*H 



172 miENDSHIP. 

self, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false 
relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the 
world, — those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two 
wander in nature at once, and before wliom the vulgar 
great show as spectres and shadows merely. 

It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spirit- 
ual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. "^Whatever 
correction of our popular views we make from insight, 
j^ature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem 
^ \ to rob us of some joy, will repay us with a greater.N^ Let 
us feel, if we will, the absolute insulation of man. We 
are sure that we have all in us. We go to Europe, or 
we pursue persons, or we read books, in the instinctive 
faith that these will call it out and reveal us to ourselves. 
Beggars all. Tlie persons are such as we; the Europe 
an old faded garment of dead persons ; the books their 
ghosts. Let us drop this idolatry. Let us give over 
this mendicancy. Let us even bid our dearest friends 
farewell, and defy them, saying, 'Who are you? Un- 
hand me : I will be dependent no more.' Ah ! seest 
thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet 
again on a higher platform, and only be more each 
other's, because we are more our own ?^ A friend is 
Janus-faced : he looks to the past and the future. He 
is the cliild of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of 
those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend. 

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I 
would have them where I can find them, but I seldom 
use them. We must have society on our own terms, 
and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I can- 
not aftbrd to speak much with my friend. If he is great, 



PUTENDSHIP. 173 

he makes me so great tliat I cannot descend to converse. 
In the great da^^s, presentiments hover before me in the 
firmament. I ought then to dedicate myself to them. 
I go in tliat I may seize them, I go out that I may seize 
tliem. I fear only that I may lose them receding into 
the sky in which now they are only a patch of brighter 
light. Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford 
to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my 
own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy 
to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or 
search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with 
you ; but then I know well I shall mourn always the van- 
ishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next week I shall 
have languid moods, when I can well afford to occupy 
myself w^h foreign objects ; then I shall regret the lost 
literature of your mind, and wish you w^ere by my side 
again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill my mind 
only with new visions, not with yourself but with your 
lustres, and I shall not be able any more than now to 
converse with you. So I will owe to my friends this 
evanescent intercourse. I will receive from them, not 
what tliey have, but what they are. •'' They shall give me 
that which properly they cannot give, but w^hich ema- 
nates from them. But they shall not hold me by any 
relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though 
we met not, and part as though we parted not. 

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, 
to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due 
correspondence on the other. --Why should I cumber 
myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious ? 
It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide 



174 I^UIENDSIIIP. 

and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on 
the reflecting planet.'' Let your greatness educate the 
crude and cold companion. It' he is unequal, he will 
presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own 
shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost 
soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is 
thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great 
will soe that true love cannot be unrequited. True love 
transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods 
on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crum- 
bles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and 
feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may 
hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. 
J The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magna- 
nimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for 
infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify 
both. 



PRUDENCE. 



Theme no poet gladly sung, 
Fair to old and foul to young. 
Scorn not thou the love of parts. 
And the articles of arts. 
Grandeur of the perfect sphere 
Thanks the atoms that cohere. 



PEUDENCE. 



What riglit have I to write on Prudence, wliereof I 
have little,^ and that of the negative sort ?! My prudence ! 
consists in avoiding and going without, not in the in- 
venting of means and methods, not in adroit steering, not 
in gentle repairing. I have no skill to make money 
spend well, no genius in my economy, and whoever sees 
my garden discovers that I must have some other garden. 
Yet I love facts, and hate lubricity, and peoy)le without 
perception. Then I have the same title to write on pru- 
dence, that I have to write on poetry or holiness. We 
write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from 
experience. We paint those qualities wliich we do not 
possess. The poet admires the man of energy and tac- 
tics ; the merchant breeds his son for the church or the 
bar ; and where a man is not vain and egotistic, you 
shall find what he has not by his praise. Moreover, it 
would be hardly honest in me not to balance these fine 
lyric words of Love and Friendship with words of coarser 
sound, and, whilst my debt to my senses is real and con- 
stant, not to own it in passing. 

Prudence is tlie virtue of the senses.-^ It is the science 
of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward 
life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It moves mat- 
8* L 



178 PRUDENCE. 

tev after the laws of matter. It is content to seek liealth 
of body by complying with physical conditions, and health 
of mind by the laws of the intellect. 

The world of tlie senses is a world of shows ; it does 
not exist for itself, but has a symbolic character; and a 
true prudence or law of shows recognizes the co-presence 
of other laws, and knows that its own office is subaltern ; 
knows that it is surface and not centre where it works. 
Prudence is false wlien detaclied. It is legitiuiate when 
it is the Natural History of the soul incarnate ; when it 
nnfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope oi 
the senses. 

There are all degrees of proficiency in know^ledge of 
tlie world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to 
indicate three. ' One class live to the utility of the sym- 
bol ; esteeming healtli and wealth a final good. Another 
class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol ; 
as the poet and artist, and the naturalist, and man of 
science. A third class live above the beauty of the sym- 
bol to the beauty of the thing signified ; tliese are wise 
men. The first class have common-sense ; the second, 
taste ; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a 
long time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and 
enjoys the symbol solidly ; then also has a clear eye for 
its beauty, and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this 
sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build 
houses and barns thereon, reverencing the splendor of 
the God which he sees bursting through each chink and 
cranny. 

^ The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and 
winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to 



PRUDENCE. 179 

matter, as if we possessed no other faculties tliaii the 
palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear ; a prudence 
which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, 
which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one 
question of any project, — Will it bake bread? This is 
a disease like a thickening of the skin until the vital 
organs are destroyed.^ But culture, revealing the high 
origin of the apparent world, and aiming at tlie perfec- 
tion of the man as the end, degrades everything else, as 
health and bodily life, into means. It sees prudence not 
to be a several faculty, but a name for wisdom and virtue 
conversing with the body and its wants. Cultivated 
men always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, the 
achievement of a civil or social measure, great personal 
influence, a graceful and commanding address, had tlieir 
vahie as proofs of the energy of the spirit. ^If a man 
lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or 
pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel 
or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.' 

The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the 
god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. 
It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. The true 
prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowl- 
edge of an internal and real world. This recognition 
once made, — the order of the world and the distribution 
of affairs and times being studied with the co-perception 
of their subordinate place, will reward any degree of 
attention. Tor our existence, thus apparently attached 
in nature to the sun and the returning moon and the 
periods which they mark, — sa susceptible to climate 
and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond 



180 PRUDENCE. 

of splendor, and so tender to hunger and cold and debt, 
— reads all its primary lessons out of these books. 

Prudence does not go behind nature, and ask whence 
it is. It takes the laws of the world, whereby man's 
being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws, 
that it may enjoy their proper good. It respects space 
and time, climate, want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth 
and death. There revolve to give bound and period to 
his being, on all sides, the sun and moon, the great for- 
malists in the sky; here lies stubborn matter, and will 
not swerve from its chemical routine. Here is a planted 
globe, pierced and belted with natural laws, and fenced 
and distributed externally with civil partitions and prop- 
erties which impose new restraints on the young inhabi- 
tant. 

We eat of the bread which grows in the field. We 
live by the air which blows around us, and we are poi- 
soned by the air that is too cold or too hot, too dry or 
too wet. Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and 
divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and 
tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. 
I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt ; the house smokes, 
or I have a headache ; then the tax ; and an affair to be 
transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the 
stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward 
word, — these eat up the hours. Do what we can, sum- 
mer wnll have its flies : if we walk in the woods, we must 
feed mosquitoes : if we go a-fishing, we must expect a 
wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle 
persons : we often resolve to give up the care of the 
weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain. 



PRUDENCE. 181 

We are instructed by these petty experiences which 
usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and four 
months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern 
temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who en- 
joys the fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may 
ramble all day at will. At night, he may sleep on a 
mat under the moon, and wlierever a wild date-tree 
grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a 
table for his morning meal. The northerner is perforce 
a householder. Ho must brew, bake, salt, and preserve 
his food, and pile wood and coal. But as it happens 
that not one stroke can labor lay to, without some new 
acquaintance with nature ; and as nature is inexhaustibly 
significant, the inhabitants of these climates have always 
excelled the southerner in force. Such is the value of 
these matters, that a man who knows other things can 
never know too much of these. Let him have accurate 
perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, handle ; if eyes, 
measure and discriminate ; let him accept and hive every 
fact of chemistry, natural history, and economics ; the 
more he has, the less is he willing to spare any one. 
Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their 
value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and 
innocent action. The domestic man, who loves no mu- 
sic so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the 
logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces 
which others never dream of. The application of means 
to ends insures victory and the songs of victory, not less 
in a farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or of war. 
The good husband finds method as efficient in the pack- 
ing of fire- wood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits 



182 PHUDENCE. 

ill the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or (lie files of 
the Department of State. In the rainy day, he builds a 
work-bench, or gets his tool-box set in the corner of 
the barn-chamber, and stored with nails, gimlet, pincers, 
screw-driver, and chisel. Herein he tastes an old joj of 
youth and childhood, the cat-like love of garrets, presses, 
and corn-chambers, and of the conveniences of long 
housekeeping. His garden or his poultry -yard tells him 
many pleasant anecdotes. One might find argument for 
optimism in the abundant flow of this saccharine element 
of pleasure in every suburb and extremity of the good 
world. Let a man keep the law, — any law, — and his 
way will be strown with satisfactions. There is more 
difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the 
amount. 

On the other hand, nature punishes any neglect of 
prudence. If you think the senses final, obey their law. 
If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweet- 
ness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. 
It is vinegar to the eyes, to deal with men of loose and 
imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have 
said, " If the child says he looked out of this window, 
when he looked out of that, — whip him." Our Ameri- 
can character is marked by a more than average delight 
in accurate perception, which is shown by the currency 
of the byword, "No mistake." But the discomfort of 
unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of 
inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. 
The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by 
our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be dis- 
turbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it 



PRUDENCE. 183 

will yield us bees. Oar words and actions to be fair 
must be timely. ^ A gay and pleasant sound is the wliet- 
ting of the scythe in the morning's of June ; yet what 
is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone 
or mower's rifle, when it is too late in the season to make 
hay ? Scatter-brained and "afternoon men" spoil much 
more tlian their own affair, in spoiling the temper of 
those who deal with them. I have seen a criticism on 
some paintings, of which I am reminded when I see the 
shiftless and unhappy men who are not true to their 
senses. The Grand Duke of Weimar, Goethe's friend, a 
man of superior understanding, said: "I have sometimes 
remarked in the presence of great works of art, and just 
now especially, in Dresden, how mucli a certain property 
contributes to the eiFect which gives life to the figures, and 
to the life an irresistible truth. This property is the hit- 
ting, in all the figures we draw, the right centre of grav- 
ity. I mean, the placing the figures firm upon their feet, 
making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes on the 
spot where they should look. Even lifeless figures, as 
vessels and stools, — let them be drawn ever so correctly, 
— lose all effect so soon as they lack the resting upon 
their centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and 
oscillating appearance. The Raphael, in the Dresden 
gallery (the only greatly affecting picture which I have 
seen), is the quietest and most passionless piece you can 
imagine; a couple of saints wlio worship the Virgin and 
Child. Nevertlieless, it awakens a deeper impression 
than the contortions of ten crucified martyrs. Eor, 
beside all the resistless beauty of form, it possesses in the 
highest degree the property of the perpendicularity of all 



184 PRUDENCE. 

the figures." This perpendicularity we demand of all 
the figures in this picture of life. Let them stand on 
their feet, and not float and swing. Let us know where 
to find them. Let them discriminate between what they 
remember and what they dreamed, use plain speech, give 
us facts, and honor their own senses with trust. 

But what man shall dare tax another with imprudence ? 
Who is prudent? The men we call greatest are least 
in this kingdom. There is a certain fatal dislocation in 
our relation to nature, distorting our modes of living, 
and making every law our enemy, which seems at last to 
have aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to pon- 
der the question of Reform. We must call the highest 
prudence to counsel, and ask why health and beauty and 
genius should now be the exception, rather than the rule, 
of human nature ? We do not know the properties of 
plants and animals, and the laws of nature through our 
sympathy with the same ; but this remains the dream 
of poets. Poetry and prudence should be coincident. 
Poets should be lawgivers ; that is, the boldest lyric in- 
spiration should not chide and insult, but should an- 
nounce and lead the civil code, and the day's work. 
But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. We 
have violated law upon law, until we stand amidst ruins, 
and when by chance we espy a coincidence between rea- 
son and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty 
should be the dowry of every man and woman, as inva- 
riably as sensation ; but it is rare. Health or sound 
organization should be universal. Genius should be the 
child of genius, and every child should be inspired ; but 
now it is not to be predicted of any child, and nowhere 



PRUDENCE. 185 

is it pure. We call partial half-lights, by courtesy, 
genius; talent which converts itself to money; talent 
which glitters to-day, that it may dine and sleep well to- 
morrow ; and society is officered by men of 'parts, as they 
are properly called, and not by divine men. These use .* 

their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius Ho p^*^ 
is always ascetic; and piety and love. Appetite shows ^/ 
to the finer souls as a disease, and they find beauty in \^ 
rites and bounds that resist it. .^ ''^ [^ 

We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality ^,y W^ 
withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. The man-AA^-^' 
of talent afi'ects to call his transgressions of the laws of .^\i/^ 
the senses trivial, and to count them nothing considered ^ ^4^ 
with his devotion to his art. His art never taught him^ iKW 
lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap ^^ ^ 
where he had not sowed. His art is less for every de- ^ f .) 
duction from his holiness, and less for every defect of 
common-sense. Ou him who scorned the world, as he 
said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge. He that 
despiseth small things will perish by little and little. 
Goethe's Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair historical 
portrait, and that is true tragedy.--^ It does not seem to 
me so genuine grief when some tyrannous Richard the 
Third oppresses and slays a score of innocent persons, as 
when Antonio and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong 
each other. One living after the maxims of this world, 
and consistent and true to them, the other fired with all 
divine sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of 
sense, without submitting to their law. That is a grief 
we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no in- 
frequent case in modern biography. A man of genius. 



186 PllUDENCE. 

of an ardent temperament, reckless of plijslcal laws, self- 
indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a 
'' discomfortable cousin," a tliorn to himself and to 
others. 

The scholar shames us by his bifold lie. Whilst some- 
thing higher than prudence is active, he is admirable ; 
when common-sense is wanted, he is an encumbrance. 
Yesterday, Caesar was not so great ; to-day, the felon 
at the gallows' foot is not more miserable. Yesterday, 
radiant with the light of an ideal world, in which he lives, 
the first of men ; and now oppressed by wants and by 
sickness, for which lie must thank himself. He resem- 
bles the pitiful drivellers, whom travellers describe as 
frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk 
about all day, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking ; 
and at evening, when the bazaars are open, slink to the 
opium-shop, swallow their morsel, and become tranquil 
and glorified seers. And who has not seen the tragedy 
of imprudent genius, struggling for years with paltry pe- 
cuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and 
fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins ? 

Is it not better that a man should accept the first 
pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature is not 
slack in sending him, as hints that he must expect no 
other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self- 
denial ? Health, bread, climate, social position, have 
their importance, and he will give them their due. Let 
him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her per- 
fections the exact measure of our deviations. Let him 
make the night niglit, and the day day. Let him con- 
trol the habit of expense. Let him see that as much 



PRUDENCE. 187 

wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an. 
empire, and as mucli wisdom may be drawn from it. 
Tlie laws of the world are written out for liim on every 
piece of money in iiis hand. There is nothing he will 
not be the better for knowing, were it only the wisdom 
of Poor Richard ; or the State Street prudence of buying 
by the acre to sell by the foot ; or the thrift of the agri- 
culturist, to stick a tree between whiles, because it will 
grow whilst he sleeps ; or the prudence which consists 
in husbanding little strokes of the tool, little portions of 
time, particles of stock, and small gains. The eye of 
prudence may never shut. Iron, if kept at the iron- 
monger's, will rust ; beer, if not brewed in the right state 
of the atmosphere, will sour; timber of ships will rot at 
sea, or, if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp, and 
dry-rot ; money, if kept by us, yields no rent, and is 
liable to loss ; if invested, is liable to depreciation of the 
particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the iron 
is white ; keep the rake, says the haymaker; as nigh the 
scytlie as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our 
Yankee trade is reputed to be very much on the extreme 
of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, — good, bad, 
clean, ragged, — and saves itself by the speed with which 
it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor 
timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money 
stocks depreciate, in the few swift moments in which the 
Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. 
J In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed. . 

Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. Let him 
learn that everything in nature, ^even motes and feathers,). ^:,^\ 
goes by law and not by luck, aiid that what he sows he * ' 



[ vV' 



188 PRUDENCE. 

reaps. By diligence and self-command, let him put the 
bread he eats at his own disposal, that he may not stand in 
bitter and false relations to other men /for the best good 
of wealth is freedom/ Let him practise the minor virtues. 
How much of human life is lost in waiting ! let him not 
make his fellow-creatures w^ait. How many words and 
promises are promises of conversation ! let his be words 
of fate. When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper 
float round the globe in a pine ship, and come safe to the 
eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming popu- 
lation, let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate 
his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a 
slender human word among the storms, distances, and 
accidents that drive us hither and thither, and, by per- 
sistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to 
redeem its pledge, after months and years, in the most 
distant climates. 

We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, 
looking at that only. Human nature loves no contra- 
dictions, but is symmetrical. The prudence which se- 
cures an outward well-being is not to be studied by one 
set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by 
another, but they are reconcilable. Prudence concerns 
the present time, persons, property, and existing forms. 
But as every fact hath its roots in the soul, and, if the 
soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become 
some other thing, tlie proper administration of outward 
things will always rest on a just apprehension of their 
cause and origin, that is, the good man will be the wise 
man, and the single-hearted, the poKtic man. Every 
violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar. 



PRUDENCE. 189 

but is a stab at tlie health of human society. On tlie 
most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a 
destructive tax ; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts 
the- parties on a convenient footing, and makes their 
business a friendship. '^Trust men, and they will be true to 
you ; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves 
great, thougli they make an exception in your favor to 
all their rules of trade. *^ 

So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, 
prudence does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but in 
courage. He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful 
parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up to 
resolution. Let him front the object of his worst appre- 
hension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fear 
groundless. The Latin proverb says, that "in battles 
the eye is first overcome." Entire self-possession may 
make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a 
match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by sol- 
diers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed, and the 
fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from the 
path of the ball. '^^The terrors of the storm are chiefly 
confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the 
sailor, buff'ets it all day, and his health renews itself at 
as vigorous a pulse under the sleet, as under the sun of 
June. V 

In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neigh- 
bors, fear comes readily to heart, and magnifies the con- 
sequence of the other party ; but it is a bad counsellor. 
Every man is actually weak, and apparently strong. ' To 
himself, he seems weak ; to others, formidable. You are 
afraid of Grim ; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are 



190 PllUDENCE. 

solicitous of the good- will of the meanest person, uneasy 
at his ill-will. But the sturdiest offender of your peace 
and of the neighborhood, if you rip up his claims, is as 
thin and timid as any ; and the peace of society is often 
kept, because, as children say, one is afraid and the 
other dares not. Ear off, men swell, bully, and threaten; 
bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. 

It is a proverb, that ^ courtesy costs nothing ' ; but 
calculation might come to value love for its profit. Love 
is fabled to be blind ; but kindness is necessary to per- 
ception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water, ^f you 
meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the 
dividing lines ; but meet on what common ground re- 
mains, — if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains 
for both ; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know 
it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, 
have melted into air.^ If they set out to contend, St. 
Paul will lie, and St. John will hate. What low, poor, 
paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will 
make of the pure and chosen souls ! They will shuffle, 
and crow, crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only 
that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought 
has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, 
modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself 
in a false position with your contemporaries, by indulging 
a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though your views 
are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity 
of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that 
which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out 
your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of 
a doubt. So at least shall you get an adequate deliver- 



' PRUDENCE. ' 191 

ance. The natural motions of the soul are so much bet- 
ter than the voluntary ones, that you will never do your- 
self justice in dispute. The thought is not then taken 
hold of by the right handle, does not show itself propor- 
tioned, and in its true bearings, but gives extorted, 
hoarse, and half witness. But assume a consent, and 
it shall presently be granted, since, really, and under- 
neath their external diversities, all men are of one heart 
and mind. 

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men 
on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and in- 
timacy with people, as if we waited for some better sym- 
pathy and intimacy to come.' But whence and when? 
To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst 
we are preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers 
die off from us. Scarcely can we say, we see new men, 
new women, approacliing us. We are too old to regard 
fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater or 
more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of tliose af- 
fections and consuetudes that grow near us. These old 
shoes are easy to the feet. Undoubtedly, we can easily 
pick faults in our company, can easily whisper names 
prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's 
imagination hath its friends; and life would be dearer 
with such companions. But, if you cannot have them 
on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not 
the Deity, but our ambition, hews and shapes the new 
relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their 
flavor in garden-beds. 

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all 
the virtues, range themselves on the side of prudence, or 



193 PRUDENCE. 

the art of securing a present well-being. I do not know 
if all matter will be found to be made of one element, as 
oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the world of manners 
and actions is wrought of one stuff, and, begin where we 
will, we are pretty sure in a short space to be mumbling 
our ten commandments. 



HEKOISM. 

* Paradise is under the shadow of swords." 

Mahomet. 

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves. 
Sugar spends to fatten slaves, 
Rose and vine -leaf deck buffoons ; 
Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons. 
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread 
Lightning-knotted round his head; 
The hero is not fed on sweets, 
Daily his own heart he eats ; 
Chambers of the great are jails, 
And head-winds right for royal sails. 



TSl 



IIEEOISM. 



In the elder Englisli dramatists, and mainly in the 
plays of Beaumont and Eletcher, there is a constant 
recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were as 
easily marked in the society of their age, as color is in 
our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro, 
or Valerio enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or 
governor exclaims. This is a gentleman, — and proffers 
civilities without end ; but all the rest are slag and refuse. 
In harmony witli this delight in personal advantages, 
there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character 
and dialogue, — as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad 
Lover, the Double Marriage, — wherein the speaker is 
so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of 
character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional 
incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among 
many texts, take the following. The Boman Martins 
has conquered Athens, — all but the invincible spirits of 
Sophocles, the Duke of Atliens, and Dorigen, his wife. 
The beauty of the latter inflames Martins, and he seeks 
to save her husband ; but Sophocles will not ask his life, 
although assured that a word will save him, and the 
execution of both proceeds. 



196 HEUOISM. 

" Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 

Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigcn, 
Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, 
My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 

Dor. Stay, Sophocles, — with this tie up my sight ; 
Let not soft nature so transformed be. 
And lose her gentler sexed humanity. 
To make me see my lord bleed. So, 't is well ; 
Never one object underneath the sun 
Will I behold before my Sophocles : 
Farewell ; now teach the Romans how to die. 

Mar. Dost know what 't is to die ? 

Soph. Thou dost not, Martins, 
And, therefore, not what 't is to live ; to die 
Is to begin to live. It is to end 
An old, stale, weary work, and to commence 
A newer and a better. 'T is to leave 
Deceitful knaves for the society 
Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part 
At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs, 
And prove thy fortitude what then 't will do. 

Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus ? 

Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
To them I ever loved best ? Now I '11 kneel. 
But with my back toward thee ; 't is the last duty 
This trunk can do the gods. 

3Iar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
Or Martins' heart will leap out at his mouth : 
This is a man, a woman ! Kiss thy lord, 
And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
O love ! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart. 
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn. 
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 



HEKOISM. 197 

VaJ. What ails ray brother ? 

Soph. Martius, Martius, 
Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 

Dor. O star of Rome ! what gratitude can speak 
Fit words to follow such a deed as this ! 

Ma)\ This admirable duke, Valerius, 
With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
Captived himself, has captivated me, 
And though my arm hath ta'en his body here. 
His soul hath subjugated Martins' soul. 
By Romulus, he is all soul, I think ; 
He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved ; 
Then we have vanquished nothing ; he is free, 
And Martius walks now in captivity.'* 

I do not readily remember any poem, play, sermon, 
novel, or oration, that our press vents in the last few 
years, which goes to the same tune. We have a great 
many flutes and flageolets, but not often the sound of any 
fife. Yet, Wordsworth's " Laodamia," and the ode of 
" Dion," and some sonnets, have a certain noble music ; 
an^ Scott will sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait 
of Lord Evandale, given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas 
Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly and 
daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his 
favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pic- 
tures. Earlier, Robert Burns has given us a song or 
two. In the Harleian Miscellanies, there is an account 
of the battle of Lulzen, which deserves to be read. And 
Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts the 
prodigies of individual valor with admiration, all the 
more evident on the part of the narrator, that he seems 



198 HEEOISM. 

to think that his place in Christian Oxford requires of 
Lim some proper protestations of abhorrence. But, if 
we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly 
come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To 
him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminondas, tiie 
Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply 
indebted to him than to all ths ancient writers. Each 
of his " Lives " is a rebuke to the despondency and 
cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A 
wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the 
blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that book 
its immense fame. 

We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than 
books of political science, or of private economy. Life 
is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and 
chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and danger- 

> ous front. The violations of the laws of nature by our 
11 predecessors and our contemporaries are punislied in us 

^Iso. The disease and deformity around us certify the 
infraction of natural, intellectual, and moral laws, and 
joften violation on violation to breed such compound mis- 
ery. A lockjaw that bends a man's head back to his 
heels ; hydrophobia, that makes him bark at his wife and 
babes ; insanity, tliat makes him eat grass ; war, plague, 
cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, 
which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its 
outlet by liuman suifering. Unhappily, no man exists 
who has not in his own person become, to some amount, 
a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a 
share in the expiation. 

Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of 



HEROISM. 199 

the man. Let liini liear in season, tliat he is born into 
the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own 
well-being require that he should not go dancing in the 
weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither 
defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both repu- 
tation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, 
dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his 
speech, and the rectitude of his behavior. 

Towards all this external evil, the man within the 
breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability 
to cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. 
To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of 
Heroism. Its rudest form is the contem])t for safety and 
ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self- 
trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plen- 
itude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may 
suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no dis- 
turbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it 
were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in 
frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal disso- 
luteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in hero- 
ism; there is somewhat not holy in it ; it seems not to 
know that other souls are of one texture with it ; it has 
pride ; it is the extreme of individual nature. Neverthe- 
less, we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat 
in great actions, which does not allow us to go behind 
them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore 
is always right ; and although a different breeding, differ- 
ent religion, and greater intellectual activity would have 
modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for 
the hero that thing he does is the highest deed, and is 



200 HEUOISM. 

not open to the censure of plillosopliers or divines. It is 
tlie avowal of the unschooled man, that he finds a quality 
in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of 
danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is 
higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible 
antagonists. 

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of man- 
kind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the 
great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret im- 
pulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man 
can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man 
must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper 
path than any one else. Therefore, just and wise men take 
umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past : 
then tliey see it to be in jinison with their acts. All pru- 
dent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual 
prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its 
contempt of some external good. But it finds its own 
success at last, and then the prudent also extol. 

Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of 
the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defi- 
ance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all 
that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, 
and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful 
of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It 
persists ; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a forti- 
tude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of 
common life. That false prudence which dotes on health 
and wealth is the butt and merriment of heroism. Hero- 
ism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What 
shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums and cat's-cradles. 



■ HEEOISM. 201 ■ '' ^' 

to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and custard, 
which rack the wit of all society ? What joys has kind 
nature provided for us dear creatures ! There seems to 
be no interval between greatness and meanness. When j 
the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe, j 
Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, 
works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and 
dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own 
health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, set- 
ting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a 
little gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot 
choose but laugh at such earnest nonsense. " Indeed, 
these humble considerations make me out of love wit h 
greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to take note how 
many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, namely, these and 
those that were the peach-colored ones ; or to bear the in- 
ventory of thy shirts, as one for superfluity, and one other 
for use ! " 

Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, consider 
the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fireside, 
reckon narrowly the loss of time and the unusual dis- 
play : the soul of a better quality thrusts back the unsea- 
sonable economy into the vaults of life, and says, I will 
obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will pro- 
vide. Ibn Hankal, the Arabian geographer, describes a 
heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. 
*' When I was in Sogd, I saw a great building, like a 
palace, the gates of which were open and fixed back to 
the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was 
told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for 
a hundred years. Strangers may present themselves at 
9* 



203 HEROISM. 

any hour, and in whatever number; the master has 
amply provided for the reception of the men and their 
animals, and is never happier than when they tarry for 
some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any 
other country." The magnanimous know very well that 
they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger, 
— so it be done for love, and not for ostentation, — do, 
as it were, put God under obhgation to them, so perfect 
are the compensations of the universe. In some way the 
\ime ihey seem to lose is redeemed, and the pains they 
seem to take remunerate themselves. These men fan the 
flame of human love, and raise the standard of civil virtue 
among mankind. But hospitality must be for service, 
and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave 
soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor 
of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all 
it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to 
bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts. 

The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same 
wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But 
he loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. It 
seems not worth his while to be solemn, and denounce 
with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of 
tobacco, or opium, or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man 
scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses ; but with- 
out railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic. 
John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, and said of 
wine, " It is a noble, generous liquor, and we should be 
humbly thankful for it, but, as I remember, water was 
made before it." Better still is the temperance of King 
David, who poured out on the ground unto the Lord the 



HEROISM. 203 

water wliicli tliree of his warriors had brouglit him to 
drink, at the peril of their lives. 

It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword, 
after the battle of Pliilippi, he quoted a line of Euripides, 
" O virtue ! I have followed thee through life, and I find 
thee at last but a shade." I doubt not the hero is slan- 
dered by this report. The heroic soul does not sell its 
justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely, 
and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the per- 
ception that virtue is enough. Poverty is its orna- 
ment. It does not need plenty, and can very well abide 
its loss. 

But that whicli takes ray ftincy most, in the heroic 
class, is the good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is 
a height to which common duty can very well attain, to 
suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls 
set opinion, success, and life at so cheap a rate, that tliey 
will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of 
sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio, 
charged with peculation, refuses to do himself so great a 
disgrace as to wait for justification, thougli he had the 
scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces 
before the tribunes. Socrates's condemnation of himself 
to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during 
his life, and Sir Thomas More's playfulness at the scaf- 
fold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Eletcher's 
"Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and his 
company, — 

^^ Jul. Why, slaves, 't is in our power to hang ye. 

Master. Very likely, 

'T is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye." 



204 HEROISM. 

These replies are sound and whole. Sport is tlie bloom 
and glow of a perfect health. The great will not conde- 
scend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay 
as the song of a canary, though it were the building of 
cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches 
and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thou- 
sands of years. Simple hearts put all the history and 
customs of this world behind them, and play their own 
game in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws of the w^orld ; 
and such would appear, could we see the human race 
assembled in vision, like little children frolicking to- 
gether; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they 
wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influ- 
ences. 

The interest these fine stories have for us, the power 
of a romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book 
under his bench at school, our delight in the hero, is the 
main fact to our purpose. All these great and transcend- 
ent properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding the 
Greek energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already 
domesticating the same sentiment. Let us find room for 
this great guest in our small houses. The first step of 
worthiness will be to disabuse us of our superstitious as- 
sociations with places and times, with number and size. 
Why should these words, Athenian, lloman, Asia, and 
England, so tingle in the ear ? Where the heart is, there 
the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geog- 
raphy of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut Uiver, and 
Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves 
names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are ; 
and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to learn that 



HEROISM. 205 

here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here ; — and 
art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the 
Supreme Being, shall not be absent from the chamber 
where thou sittest/ Epaminondas, brave and aifection- 
ate, does not seem to us to need Olympus to die upon, 
nor the Syrian sunshine. He lies very well where he is. 
The Jerseys were honest ground enough for Washington 
to tread, and London streets for the feet of Milton. A 
great man makes his climate genial in the imagination of 
men, and its air the beloved element of all delicate spirits. 
That country is the fairest, which is inhabited by the no- 
blest minds. The pictures which fill the imagination in 
reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, 
Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean 
our life is, that we, by the depth of our living, should 
deck it with more than regal or national splendor, and 
act on principles that should interest man and nature in 
the length of our days. 

We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young 
men, who never ripened, or whose performance in actual 
life was not extraordinary. When we see their air and 
mien, when we hear them speak of society, of books, of 
religion, we admire their superiority, they seem to throw 
contempt on our entire polity and social state ; theirs is 
the tone of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolu- 
tions. But they enter an active profession, and the 
forming Colossus shrinks to the common size of man. 
The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which 
always make the Actual ridiculous ; but the tough world 
had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the 
sun to plough in its furrow. They found no example 



206 HEROISM. ' 

and no companion, and their heart fainted. What then ? 
The lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet true; 
and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organ- 
ize their belief. Or why should a woman liken herself 
to any historical woman, and think, because Sappho, or 
Sevigne, or De Stael, or the cloistered souls who have 
had genius and cultivation, do not satisfy the imagination 
and the serene Themis, none can, — certainly not she. 
Why not ? She has a new and unattempted problem to 
solve, perchance that of the liappiest nature that ever 
bloomed. Let the maiden with erect soul walk serenely 
on her way, accept the hint of each new experience, 
search in turn all the objects that solicit her eye, that she 
may learn the power and the charm of her new-born 
being, which is the kindling of a new dawn in the re- 
cesses of space. The fair girl, who repels interference by 
a decided and proud choice of influences, so careless of 
pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires every beholder with 
somewhat of her own nobleness. The silent heart en- 
courages her ; friend, never strike sail to a fear ! 
Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not 
in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and re- 
fiued by the vision. 

The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All 
men have wandering impulses, fits, and starts of generosity. 
But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do 
not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The 
heroii cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. 
Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of 
people in those actions whose excellence is that they 
outrun sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you 



HEROISM. 207 

would serve your brother, because it is fit for you to 
serve him, do not take back your words wlien you find 
that prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to 
your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done 
something strange and extravagant, and broken the mo- 
notony of a decorous age/ It was a high counsel that I 
once heard given to a young person, — " Always do what 
you are afraid to do." A simple, manly character need 
never make an apology, but should regard its past action 
with the calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that the 
event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dis- 
suasion from the battle. 

There is no weakness or exposure for which we cannot 
find consolation, in the thought, — this is a part of my 
coustitution, part of my relation and office to my fellow- 
creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I should 
never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous 
figure ? Let us be generous of our dignity, as well as 
of our money. Greatness once and forever has done 
with opinion. We tell our charities, not because we 
wish to be praised for them, not because we think they 
have great merit, but for our justification. It is a capital 
blunder ; as you discover, when another man recites his 
charities. 

To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to live 
witli some rigor of temperance, or some extremes of gen- 
erosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good- 
nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in 
plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the 
great multitude of suffering men. And not only need 
we breathe and exercise the soul by assuming the penal- 



208 HEROISM. 

ties of abstinence, of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity, 
but it behooves the wise man to look with a bold eye 
into those rarer dangers which sometimes invade men, 
and to familiarize himself with disgusting forms of dis- 
ease, with sounds of execration, and the vision of violent 
death. 

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the 
day never shines in which this element may not work. 
The circumstances of man, we say, are historically some- 
what better in this country, and at this hour, than per- 
haps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. It 
will not now run against an axe at the first step out of 
the beaten track of opinion. But whoso is heroic will 
always find crises to try his edge. Human virtue de- 
mands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of per- 
secution always proceeds. It is but the other day that 
the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a 
mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died 
when it was better not to live. 

^ I see not any road of perfect peace wliich a man can 
walk, but after the counsel of his own bosom.^^ Let him 
quit too much association, let him go home much, and 
stablish himself in those courses he approves. The un- 
remitting retention of simple and high sentiments in 
obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper 
which will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult, 
or on the scaffold. Whatever outrages have happened 
to men may befall a man again; and very easily in a 
republic, if there appear any signs of a decay of religion. 
Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, the 
youth may freely bring home to his mind, and with what 



HEROISM. 209 

sweetness of temper lie can, and inquire how fast lie can 
fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, whenever it 
may please the next newspaper and a sufficient number 
of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary. 

It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most 
susceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has 
set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly ap- 
proach a brink over which no enemy can follow us. 

" Let them rave : 
Thou art quiet in thy grave." 

In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the 
hour when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does 
not envy those who have seen safely to an end their man- 
ful endeavor ? Who that sees the meanness of our poli- 
tics, but inly congratulates Washington that he is long 
already wrapped in his shroud, and forever safe; that 
he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity not 
yet subjugated in him ? Who does not sometimes envy 
the good and brave, who are no more to suffer from the 
tumults 'of the natural world, and await with curious 
complacency the speedy term of his own conversation 
with finite nature ? And yet the love that will be anni- 
hilated sooner than be treacherous has already made death 
impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of 
the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being. 



THE OVEE-SOUL. 

' But souls that of his own good life partake. 
He loves as his own self; dear as his eye 
They are to Him : He '11 never them forsake : 
When they shall die, then God himself shall die : 
They live, they live in blest eternity.' 



Henry More. 



Space is ample, east and west. 

But two cannot go abreast, 

Cannot travel in it two : 

Yonder masterful cuckoo 

Crowds every egg out of the nest, 

Quick or dead, except its own ; 

A spell is laid on sod and stone. 

Night and Day were tampered with. 

Every quality and pith 

Surcharged and sultry with a power 

That works its will on age and hour. 



THE OVEE-SOUL. 



There is a difference between one and another liour 
of life, in their autliority and subsequent effect. Our 
faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet 
there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains 
us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other 
experiences. For this reason, the argument which is 
always forthcoming to silence those who conceive extraor- 
dinary hopes of man, namely, the appeal to experience, 
is forever invalid and vain. We give up the past to the 
objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope. 
We grant that human life is mean; but how did we find 
out tliat it was mean ? What is the ground of tliis 
uneasiness of ours ; of this old discontent ? What is the 
universal sense of want and ignorance, but ihe fine in- 
nuendo by which the sonl makes its enormous claim? 
Why do men feel that the natural history of man has 
never been written, but he is always leaving behind what 
you have said of him, and it becomes old, and books of 
metaphysics worthless ? The philosophy of six thousand 
years has not searched the cliambers and magazines of 
the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, 
in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve, 
i Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our bein^ is 



214 THE OVER-SOUL. 

descending into ns from we know not whence. The 
most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat 
incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am 
constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin 
for events than the will I call mine. 

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch 
that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours 
for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pen- 
sioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this 
ethereal water ; that I desire and look up, and put my- 
self in the attitude of reception, but from some alien 
energy the visions come. 

The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the 
present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is 
that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in 
the soft arms of the atmosphere ; that Unity, that Over- 
soul, within which every man's particular being is con- 
tained and made one with all other ; that common heart, 
of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to 
which all right action is submission ; that overpowering 
reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and con- 
strains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak 
from his character, and not from his tongue, and which 
evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and 
become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty. 
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. 
Meantime within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise 
silence ; the universal beauty, to which every part and 
particle is equally related ; the eternal One. And this 
deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all 
accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in 



THE OVER-SOUL. 215 

every Lour, but tlie act of seeing and the thing seen, tlie 
seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are 
one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the 
moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which 
these are the shining parts, is the soul. Only by the 
vision of that Wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be 
read, and by falling back on our better thoughts, by 
yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every 
man, we can know what it saith. Every man's words, 
who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those 
who do not dwell in the same thought on their own 
part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry 
its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself 
can inspire whom it will, and behold ! their speech shall 
be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the 
wind. Yet I desire, even by profane woi'ds, if I may 
not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and 
to report what hints I liave collected of the transcendent 
simplicity and energy of the Highest Law. 

If we consider what happens in conversation, in rev- 
eries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the 
instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in 
masquerade, — the droll disguises only magnifying and 
enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct 
notice, — we shall catch many hints that will broaden and 
lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes 
to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but ani- 
mates and exercises all the organs; is not a function 
like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, 
but uses these as hands and feet ; is not a faculty, but a 
light ; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of 



216 THE OVEH-SOUL. 

the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, 
in which they lie, — an immensity not possessed and that 
cannot be possessed. ' Prom within or from behind, a 
light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware 
that we are nothing, but the light is all/ A man is the 
fa9ade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. 
What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, plant- 
ing, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent 
himself, but misrepresents himself. ^^Him we do not re- 
spect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it 
appear through his action, would make our knees bend/ 
When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; 
when it breathes through his will, it is virtue ; when it 
flows through his affection, it is love. ''And the blind- 
ness of the intellect begins, when it would be some- 
thing of itself."' The weakness of the will begins, when 
the individual would be something of himself. ^ All re- 
form aims, in some one particular, to let tlie soul have 
its way through us; in other words, to engage us to 
obey. 

Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible: 
Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too sub- 
tile. It is undefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that 
it pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual 
being is in man. A wise old proverb says, " God comes 
to see us without bell " ; that is, as there is no screen or 
ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so 
is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the eifect, 
ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken 
away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual 
nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and 



THE OVER-SOUL. 217 

know, Love, freedom, Power. These natures no man 
ever got above, but tliey tower over us, and most in the 
moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. 

The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak is 
made known by its independency of those hmitations 
which circumscribe us on every hand. The soul circum- 
scribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all ex- 
perience. In like manner it abolishes time and space. 
The influence of the senses has, in most men, overpowered 
the mind to that degree, that the walls of time and space 
have come to look real and insurmountable ; and to 
speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign 
of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse meas- 
ures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with 

time, — 

" Can crowd eternity into an hour. 
Or stretch an hour to eternity." 

We are often made to feel that there is another youth 
and age than that which is measured from the year of our 
natural birth. Some thoughts always find us young and 
keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal 
and eternal beauty. Every man parts from that contem- 
plation with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages 
than to mortal life. The least activity of the intellectual 
powers redeems us in a degree from the conditions of 
time. In sickness, in languor, give us a strain of poetry, 
or a profound sentence, and we are refreshed ; or pro- 
duce a volume of Plato, or Shakspeare, or remind us of 
their names, and instantly we come into a feehng of lon- 
gevity. See how the deep, divine thought reduces cen- 
turies, and millenniums, and makes itself present through 

VOL. I. 10 



218 THE OVER-SOUL. 

all ages. Is the teacliing of Christ less eifective now 
than it was when first his mouth was opened ? The em- 
phasis of facts and person in my thought has nothing to 
do with time. And so, always, the soul's scale is one ; 
the scale of the senses and the understanding is another. 
Before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space, and 
Nature shrink away. In common speech, we refer all 
things to time, as we habitually refer tlie immensely sun- 
dered stars to one concave sphere. And so we say that 
the Judgment is distant or near, that the Millennium 
approaches, that a day of certain political, moral, social 
reforms is at hand, and the like, when we mean, that, in 
the nature of things, one of the facts we contemplate is 
external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and 
connate with the soul. The things we now esteem fixed, 
shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from 
our experience and fall. The wind shall blow them none 
knows whither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, 
London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, or 
any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is 
the world. The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating 
a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. She has 
no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. 
The soul knows only the soul ; the web of events is the 
flowing robe in which she is clothed. 

After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its 
progress to be computed. The soul's advances are not 
made by gradation, such as can be represented by mo- 
tion in a straight line ; but rather by ascension of state, 
such as can be represented by metamorphosis, — from 
the e^g to the worm, from the worm to the fly. The 



THE OVEU-SOUL, 219 

growths of genius are of a certain total character, that 
does not advance the elect individual first over John, 
then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the pain of 
discovered inferiority, but by every throe of growth the 
man expands there where he works, passing, at each pul- 
sation, classes, populations, of men. With each divine 
impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and 
finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and ex- 
* pires its air. It converses with truths that have always 
been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a 
closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons 
in the house. 

Tliis is the law of moral and of mental gain. The 
simple rise as by specific levity, not into a particular 
virtue, but into the region of all the virtues. They are 
in the spirit which contains them all. The soul requires 
purity, but purity is not it ; requires justice, but justice 
is not that ; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better ; 
so that there is a kind of descent and accommodation felt 
when we leave speaking of moral nature, to urge a virtue 
which it enjoins. To the well-born child, all the virtues 
are natural, and not painfully acquired. Speak to his 
heart, and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. 

Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual 
growth, which obeys the same law. Those who are 
capable of humility, of justice, of love, of aspiration, 
stand already on a platform that commands the sciences 
and arts, speecli and poetry, action and grace. For 
whoso dwells in this moral beatitude already anticipates 
those special powers which men prize so highly. Tlie 
lover has no talent, uo skill, which passes for quite 



220 THE OVER-SOUL. 

nothing with his enamored maiden, however little she 
may possess of related faculty ; and the heart which 
abandons itself to the Supreme Mind finds itself related 
to all its works, and will travel a royal road to particular 
knowledges and powers. In ascendhig to this primary 
and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our remote 
station on the circumference instantaneously to the centre 
of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we see 
causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow 
effect. 

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of 
the spirit in a form, — in forms, like my own. I live in 
society ; with persons who answer to thoughts in my 
own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great 
instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I 
am certified of a common nature ; and these other souls, 
these separated selves, draw me as notliing else can. 
They stir in me the new emotions we call passion ; of 
love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conver- 
sation, competition, persuasion, cities, and war. Persons 
are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. 
In youth we are mad for persons. Cliildhood and youtli 
see all the world in them. But the larger experience of 
man discovers the identical nature appearing through 
them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the im- 
personal. In all conversation between two persons, 
tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common 
nature. That third party or common nature is not 
social ; it is impersonal ; is God. And so in groups 
where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions, 
the company become aware that the thought rises to an 



THE OVER-SOUL. 221 

equal level in all bosoms, — tliat all have a spiritual 
property in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all 
become wiser than they were. It arches over them like 
a temple, this unity of thought, in which every heart 
beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and thinks 
and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious of 
attaining to a higher self-possession. There is a certain 
wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest 
men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education 
often labors to silence and obstruct. The mind is one, 
and the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, 
think much less of property in truth. They accept it 
tliankfully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with 
any man's name, for it is theirs long beforehand, and 
from eternity. The learned and the studious of thought 
have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direc- 
tion in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. 
We owe many valuable observations to people who are 
not very acute or profound, and who say the thing with- 
out effort, which we want and have long been hunting in 
vain. <^ The action of the soul is oftener in that which is 
felt and left unsaid, than in that which is isaid in any 
conversation.^ It broods over every society, and they 
unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better 
than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we 
know at the same time that we are much more. I feel 
the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with 
my neighbors, that somewhat liigher in each overlooks 
this by-play, '^and Jove nods to Jove from behind each 
of us.^ 

Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean 



223 THE OVER-SOUL. 

service to the world, for whicli they forsake their native 
nobleness, thej resemble those Arabian sheiks, who dwell 
in mean houses, and affect an external poverty, to escape 
the rapacity of the Paclia, and reserve all their display of 
wealth for their interior and guarded retirements. 

As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period 
of life. It is adult already in the infant man. In my 
dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accom- 
plishments and my money, stead me nothing ; but as 
much soul as I have avails. ' If I am wilful, he sets his 
will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, 
the degradation of beating him by my superiority of 
strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the 
soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of 
his young eyes looks the same soul ; he reveres and loves 
with me. 

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We 
know truth when we see it, let sceptic and scoffer say 
what they choose. Poolish people ask you, when you 
have spoken what they do not wish to hear, * How do 
you know it is truth, and not an error of your own ? ' 
* We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we 
know when we are awake that we are awake.^ It was 
a grand sentence of Emanuel Swedenborg, which would 
alone indicate the greatness of that man's perception, — 
" It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to 
confirm whatever he pleases ; but to be able to discern 
that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, 
this is the mark and character of intelligence." In the 
book I read, the good thought returns to me, as every 
truth will, the image of the whole soul. To the bad 



THE OVEK-SOUL. 223 

thought which I find in it, the same soul becomes a dis- 
cerning, separating sword, and lops it away. We are 
wiser than we know. If we will not interfere with our 
thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands 
in God, we know the particular thing, and everything, 
and every man. For the Maker of all things and all 
persons stands behind us, and casts his dread omnis- 
cience through us over things. 

But beyond this recognition of its own in particular 
passages of the individuaFs experience, it also reveals 
truth. And here we should seek to reinforce ourselves 
by its very presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier 
strain of that advent. For the soul's communication of 
truth is the highest event in nature, since it then does 
not give somewhat from itself, but it gives itself, or 
passes into and becomes that man whom it enlightens ; 
or, in proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him 
to itself. 

We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its 
manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. 
These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. 
For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind 
into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet 
before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every dis- 
tinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates 
men with awe and delight. A thrill passes through all 
men at the reception of new truth, or at the performance 
of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. 
In these communications, the power to see is not sepa- 
rated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from 
obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful 



221 THE OVER-SOUL. 

perception. Every moment wlien the individual feels 
himself invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of 
our constitution, a certain enthusiasm attends the indi- 
vidual's consciousness of that Divine presence. The 
character and duration of this enthusiasm varies with 
the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance 
and prophetic inspiration, — which is its rarer appear- 
ance, — to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in 
which form it warms, like our houseliold fires, all the 
families and associations of men, and makes society pos- 
sible. A certain tendency to insanity has always at- 
tended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if 
they had been " blasted with excess of light." The 
trances of Socrates, the " union " of Plotinus, the vision 
of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, the aurora of 
Eehmen, the convulsions of George Pox and his Quakers, 
the illumination of Swedenborg, are of this kind. What 
was in the case of these remarkable persons a ravishment 
has, in innumerable instances in common life, been ex- 
hibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the history 
of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture 
of the Moravian and Quietist ; the opening of the inter- 
nal sense of the Word, in the language of the New Jeru- 
salem Church ; the revival of the Calvinistic churches ; 
the experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of 
that shudder of awe and delight with which the individ- 
ual soul always mingles with the universal soul. 

The nature of these revelations is the same ; tliey are 
perceptions of the absolute law. They are solutions of 
the soul's own questions. Tliey do not answer the 
questions which the understanding asks. The soul 



THE OVEll-SOUL. 225 

answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is 
inquired after. 

/Eevelation is the disclosure of the soul.'' The popular 
notion of a revelation is, that it is a telling of fortunes. 
In past oracles of the soul, tlie understanding seeks to 
find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell 
from God how long men shall exist, what their liands 
shall do, and who shall be their company, adding names, 
and dates, and places. But we must pick no locks. We 
must check this k:>w curiosity. An answer in words is 
delusive ; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. 
Do not require a description of the countries towards 
w^hicli you sail. The description does not describe them 
to you, and to-morrow you arrive there, and know them 
by inhabiting them. Men ask concerning the immor- 
tality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state 
of the sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus 
lias left replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never 
a moment did that sublime spirit speak in their patois. 
To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea 
of immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, living 
in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, 
heeding only the manifestations of these, never made the 
separation of the idea of duration from the essence of 
these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerning the 
duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples to sever 
duration from the moral elements, and to teach the im- 
mortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by 
evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality 
is separately taught, man is already fallen. In the flow- 
ing of love, in the adoration of humility, there is no 
10* o 



226 THE OVER-SOUL. 

question of continuance. No inspired man ever asks 
this question, or condescends to these evidences. Por 
the soul is true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed 
abroad cannot wander from the present, which is infiuite, 
to a future which would be finite. 

These questions which we lust to ask about the future 
are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them. 
No answer in words can reply to a question of things. It 
is not in an arbitrary *' decree of God," but in the nature 
of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow ; 
for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than 
that of cause and effect. * By this veil, which curtains 
events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day.*^ 
The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions 
of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting 
the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, 
work and live, work and live,^'and all unawares the ad- 
vancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condi- 
tion, and the question and the answer are one.^"^ 

Ey the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which 
burns until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and 
surges of an ocean of light, we see and know each otiier, 
and what spirit each is of. Who can tell the grounds of 
his knowledge of the character of the several individuals 
in his circle of friends ? No man. Yet their acts and 
words do not disappoint him. In that man, though he 
knew no ill of him, he put no trust. In that otlicr, 
tliough they had seldom met, authentic signs had yet 
passed, to signify that he might be trusted as one who 
had an interest in his own character. We know each 
other very well, — which of us has been just to himself, 



THE OVEE-SOUL. 227 

and wlietlier that which we teach or behold is only an 
aspiration, or is our honest effort also. 

We are all discerners of spirits. That diagnosis lies 
aloft in our life or unconscious power. The intercourse 
of society — its trade, its religion, its friendships, its 
quarrels — is one wide, judicial investigation of charac- 
ter. In full court, or in small committee, or confronted 
face to face, accuser and accused, men offer themselves 
to be judged. "'Against their will they exhibit those 
decisive trifles by which character is read.^ But who 
judges ? and what ? Not our understanding. We do 
not read them by learning or craft. ''No ; the wisdom of 
tlie wise man consists herein, that he does not judge 
them ; he lets them judge themselves, and merely reads 
and records their own verdict. 

By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is over- 
powered, and, maugre our efforts or our imperfections, 
your genius will speak from you, and mine from me. 
^That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but 
involuntarily.^ Thouglits come into our minds by avenues 
which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our 
minds through avenues which we never voluntarily 
opened. Character teaches over our head. The infallible 
index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes. 
Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor 
books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together, can hin- 
der him from being deferential to a higher spirit than his 
own. If he have not found his home in God, his man- 
ners, his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the 
build, shall I say, of all his opinions, will involuntarily 
confess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he have 



228 THE OVER-SOUL. 

found his centre, tlie Deity will shine througli him, 
througli all the disguises of ignorance, of ungenial tem- 
perament, of unfavorable circumstance. The tone of 
seeking is one, and the tone of having is another. 

The great distinction between teachers sacred or liter- 
ary, — between poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope, 
— between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant, and Cole- 
ridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh, 
and Stewart, — between men of the world, who are reck- 
oned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent 
mystic, prophesying, half insane under the infinitude of 
his thought, — is, that one class speak from within^ or 
from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; 
and the other class, from without^ as spectators merely, 
or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence 
of third persons. It is of no use to preach to me from 
without. I can do that too easily myself. Jesus speaks 
always from within, and in a degree that transcends all 
others. In that is the miracle. I believe beforehand 
that it ought so to be. All men stand continually in the 
expectation of the appearance of such a teacher. But if 
a man do not speak from within the veil, where the word 
is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. 

The same Omniscience flow^s into the intellect, and 
makes what w^e call genius. ^ Much of the wisdom of the 
world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of 
men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not 
writers. Among the multitude of scholars and authors, 
we feel no hallowing presence ; w^e are sensible of a knack 
and skill rather than of inspiration ; they have a light, 
and know not whence it comes, and call it their own ; 



THE OVEE-SOUL. 229 

tlieir talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown 
member, so that their strength is a disease. In these 
instances tJie intellectual gifts do not make the impres- 
sion of virtue, but almost of vice; and we feel that a 
man's talents stand in the way of his advancement in 
truth. But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing 
of the common heart. It is not anomalous, but more 
like, and not less like other men. There is, in all great 
poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any 
talents they exercise. The author, tlie wit, the partisan, 
the fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. 
Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in 
Shakspeare, in Milton. They are content with truth. 
They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and 
phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the fran- 
tic passion and violent coloring of inferior, but popular 
writers. Eor they are poets by the free course which 
they allow to the informing soul, which through their 
eyes beholds again, and blesses the things wliich it hath 
made. Tiie soul is superior to its knowledge; wiser 
than any of its works. The great poet makes us feel our 
own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. 
His best communication to our mind is to teach us to 
despise all he has done. Shakspeare carries us to such 
a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth 
which beggars his own ; and we then feel that the splen- 
did works which he has created, and which in other 
hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no 
stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing 
traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered it- 
.self in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from 



230 THE OVER-SOUL. 

day to day, forever. Why, tlien, should I make account 
of Hamlet and Lear, as if we had not the soul from which 
they fell as syllables from the tongue ? 

This energy does not descend into individual life on 
any other condition than entire possession. It comes to 
the lowly and simple ; it comes to whomsoever will put 
oft* what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight! it 
comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those 
whom it inhabits, we are apprised of new degrees of 
greatness. From that inspiration the man comes back 
with a changed tone. He does not talk with men with 
an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires of 
us to be plain and true. The vain traveller attempts to 
embellish his life by quoting my lord, and the prince, and 
the countess, who thus said or did to him. The ambi- 
tious vulgar show you their spoons, and brooches, and 
rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. The 
more cultivated, in their account of their own experience, 
cull out the pleasing, poetic circumstance, — the visit to 
Rome, the man of genius they saw, the brilliant friend 
they know ; still further on, perhaps, the gorgeous land- 
scape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts, they 
enjoyed yesterday, — and so seek to throw a romantic 
color over their life. But the soul that ascends to wor- 
ship the great God is plain and true ; has no rose-color, 
no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures; does not 
want admiration ; dwells in the hour that now is, in the 
earnest experience of the common day, — by reason of 
the present moment and the mere trifle having become 
porous to thought, and bibulous of the sea of hght." 

Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and lit- 



THE OVEE-SOUL. 231 

erature looks like word-catcliing. The simplest utter- 
ances are worthiest to be written, yet are thej so cheap, 
and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the 
soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or 
bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and 
the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, 
or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your 
trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain 
confession, and omniscient affirmation. 

Souls such as these treat you as gods would ; walk as 
gods in the earth, accepting without any admiration your 
wit, your bounty, your virtue even, — say rather your 
act of duty, for your virtue they own as their proper 
blood, royal as themselves, and over-royal, aud the father 
of the gods. But what rebuke their plain fraternal bear- 
ing casts on the mutual flattery with which authors solace 
each other and wound themselves ! These flatter not. I 
do not wonder that these men go to see Cromwell, and 
Christina, and Cliarles the Second, and James the First, 
and the Grand Turk, Eor tliey are, in tlieir own eleva- 
tion, the fellows of kings, and must feel the servile tone 
of conversation in the world. They must always be a 
godsend to princes, for they confront them, a king to a 
king, without ducking or concession, and give a high 
nature the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of 
plain humanity, of even companionship, and of new ideas. 
Tliey leave them wiser and superior men.. '^ Souls like 
these make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than 
flattery.'' Deal so plainly with man and woman, as to 
constrain the utmost sincerity, and destroy all hope of 
trifling with you. It is the highest compliment you can 



233 THE OVEE-SOUL. 

pay. Their "highest praising," said Milton, "is not 
flattery, and their plainest advice is a kind of praising." 

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act 
of the soul. The simplest' person, who in his integrity 
worships God, becomes God : yet for ever and ever the 
influx of this better and universal self is new and un- 
searchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How 
dear, liow soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peo- 
pling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes 
and disappointments ! When we have broken our god of 
^tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may 
\ God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling 
of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the 
heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every 
side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. ^ He has not 
the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, 
and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular un- 
certainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation 
of time, the solution of his private riddles. He is sure 
that his welfare is dear to the heart of being.' In the 
presence of law to his mind, he is overflowed with a reli- 
ance so universal, that it sweeps away all cherished hopes 
and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its 
flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his good. 
The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee.' You 
are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but 
your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you 
not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him ? 
for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, 
and could therefore very well bring you together, if it 
were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to 



THE OVER-SOUL. 233 

go and render a service to wliicli your talent and your 
taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. 
Has it not occurred to you, that you have no right to 
go unless you are equally willing to be prevented from 
going ? '^ O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that 
is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to 
liear, will vibrate on thine ear ! Every proverb, every 
book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or com- 
fort, shall surely come home through open or winding 
passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but 
the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee 
in his embrace. And this, because the heart in thee is 
tlie heart of all ; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersec- 
tion is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls un- 
interruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as 
the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its 
tide is one.^ 

Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and 
all thought to his heart ; this, namely, that the Highest 
dwells with him ; that the sources of nature are in his 
own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he 
would know what the great God speaketh, he must ' go 
into his closet and shut the door,' as Jesus said. God 
will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must 
greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the 
accents of other men's devotion. Even their prayers are 
hurtful to him, until he have made his own. Our religion ' 
vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever \ 
the appeal is made — no matter how indirectly — to \ 
numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that re- \ 
ligion is not. ' He that finds God a sweet, enveloping 



234 THE OVER-SOUL. 

thought to him never counts his company. When I sit 
in that presence, who shall dare to come in ? When I 
rest in perfect humility, when I burn with pure love, 
what can Calvin or Swedenborg say? 

It makes no difference whether the appeal is to num- 
bers or to one. The faith that stands on authority is not 
faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of 
religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men 
have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, 
is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. 
It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and 
plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower ; it never 
appeals from itself. It believes in itself. Before the 
immense possibilities of man, all mere experience, all past 
biography, however spotless and sainted, shrinks away. 
Before that heaven which our presentiments foreshow us, 
we cannot easily praise any form of life we have seen or 
read of. We not only affirm that we have few great men, 
but, absolutely speaking, that we have none ; that we 
have no history, no record of any character or mode of 
living, that entirely contents us. The saints and demi- 
gods whom history worships we are constrained to accept 
with a grain of allowance. Though in our lonely hoars 
we draw a new strength out of their memory, yet, pressed 
on our attention, as they are by the thoughtless and cus- 
tomary, they fatigue and invade. The soul gives itself, 
alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and 
Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and 
speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and nimble. 
It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not 
called religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its 



THE OVEE-SOUL. 235 

owtt, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by 
a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, 
it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. 
I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow 
receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do overlook 
the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair acci- 
dents and effects wliich change and pass. More and 
more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and 
I become public and human in my regards and actions. 
So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, 
which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learn- 
ing, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," 
man will come to see that the world is the perennial 
miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished 
at particular wonders ; he will learn that there is no pro- 
fane history ; that all history is sacred ; that the universe 
is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He 
will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, 
but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from 
what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content wilh 
all places and with any service he can render. He will 
calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust 
which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole 
future in the bottom of tlie heart. 



CIRCLES. 



Nature centres into balls, 
And her proud ephemerals. 
Fast to surface and outside, 
Scan the profile of the sphere ; 
Knew they what that signified, 
A new genesis were here. 



CIRCLES. 



The eye is the first circle ; the horizon which it forms 
is the second ; and througliout nature this primary figure 
is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the 
cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature 
of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its 
circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading 
the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we 
have already deduced, in considering the circular or com- 
pensatory character of every human action. Another 
analogy we shall now trace; that every action admits 
of being outdone. Our hfe is an apprenticeship to the 
truth, that around every circle another can be drawn ; 
that there is no end in nature, but every end is a begin- 
ning ; that there is always another dawn risen on mid- 
noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. 

This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the 
Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands 
of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the con- 
demner of every success, may conveniently serve us to 
connect many illustrations of human power in every j 

department. / M- ' 

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid I 
and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees, .^^t*^ • 



r/i^ 



/i CIRCLES. 

Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass 
of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. 
Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws 
after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise 
into another idea : they will disappear. Tlie Greek 
sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of 
ice ; here and there a solitary figure or fragment remain- 
ing, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells 
and mountain clefts, in Juue and July. Eor the genius 
that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek 
letters last a little longer, but are already passing under 
the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit 
which the creation of new thouglit opens for all that is 
old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an 
old planet ; the new races fed out of the decomposition 
of the foregoing.- New arts destroy the old. See the 
investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hy- 
draulics ; fortifications, by gunpowder ; roads and canals, 
by railways ; sails, by steam ; steam, by electricity. 

You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts 
of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this 
huge wall, and that which builds is better than that 
which is built .^ The hand that built can topple it down 
much faster. Better than the hand, and nimbler, was 
the invisible thought which wrought through it; and 
thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, 
being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. 
Everything looks permanent until its secret is known. 
A rich estate appears to woman a firm and lasting fact; 
to a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, 
and easily lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds. 



CIECLES. 241 

seem a fixture, like a gold-mine, or a river, to a citizen ; 
but to a large farmer, not much more fixed tlian tlie state 
of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and sec- 
ular, but it has a cause like all the rest ; and when once 
I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably 
wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable ? 
Permanence is a word of degrees. Everything is medial. 
Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat- 
balls. 

•^The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy andE 
defying tliough he look, he has a helm which he obeys, 
which is the idea after which all his facts a're classified. 
He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea 
which commands his own. The life of man is a self- 
evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, 
rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, 
and that without end. The extent to which this gen- 
eration of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends 
on the force or truth of the individual soul. Eor h is the 
inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a 
circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an em- 
pire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to 
heap itself on that ridge, and to sohdify and hem in the 
life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over 
that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on 
the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, 
with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart 
refuses to be imprisoned ; in its first and narrowest 
pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to 
immense and innumerable expansions. 

Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. 

VOL. I. 11 P 




243 ciucLES. 

Every general law only a particular fact of some more 
general law presently to disclose itself. There is no out- 
side, no enclosing wall, no circumference to us. The 
man finishes his story, — how good! how final! how it 
puts a new face on all things ! He fills the sky. Lo 1 on 
the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around 
the circle we liad just pronounced the outline of the 
sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but 
only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to 
draw a circle outside of Lis antagonist. And so men do 
by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the 
mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged 
into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain 
nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder 
generalization. '^ In the thought of to-morrow there is a 
power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the lit- 
eratures, of the nations, and marshal thee to a Heaven 
which no epic dream has yet depicted."^ Every man is not 
so much a workman in the world, as he is a suggestion 
of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the 
next age. 

Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder : the 
steps are actions; the new prospect is power. Every 
several result is threatened and judged by that which fol- 
lows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the new ; 
it is only limited by the new. / The new statement is 
always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the 
old, comes like an abyss of scepticism. But the eye 
soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects 
of one cause ; then its innocency and benefit appear, 
and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles 
before the revelation of the new hour.- 



CIRCLES. 243 

Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look 
crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of 
spirit ? Resist it not ; it goes to refine and raise thy 
theory of matter jnst as much. 

There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to con- 
sciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be fully 
understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests 
at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be other- 
wise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, 
was never opened ; there is always a residuum unknown, 
unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a 
greater possibility. 

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am 
full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no 
reason why I should not have the same thought, the 
same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, 
whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in tlie 
world ; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this di- 
rection in which now I see so much ; and a month hence, 
I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so 
many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this 
will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow ! I am 
God in nature ; I am a weed by the wall. 

The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to 
work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a 
man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot 
forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love ; yet, 
if I have a friend, I am tormented by my imperfections. 
The love of me accuses the other party. If he were high 
enougli to slight me, then could I love liim, and rise by 
my affection to new height s. A man's growth is seen in 



4 



244 CIRCLES. 

the successive choirs of liis friends. Tor eveiy friend 
whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.- I thought as 
I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why 
should I play witli them this game of idolatry ? I know 
and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy 
limits of persons called high and worthy. E-ich, noble, 
and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but 
truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, 
they art not thou ! - Every personal consideration that 
we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones of 
angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.- 

How often must we learn this lesson ? Men cease to 
interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin 
is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's 
limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents ? has 
he enterprise ? has he knowledge ? it boots not. • Infinitely 
alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great 
hope, a sea to swim in ; now, you have found his shores, 
found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.^^ 

Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty 
seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. 
Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of 
two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle Pla- 
tonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, dis- 
cordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to be two 
extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far 
back as to preclude a still higher vision. 



^ .'^y Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on 
kh j^ /this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when 
J^jl^ a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no 
)i(V. j} I man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is 



)i<*^.ir 



CIRCLES. 245 

not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to- 
morrow ; there is not any literary reputation, not the so- 
called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised 
and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts 
of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and 
morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new general- 
ization. Generalization is always a new influx of the di- 
vinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it. 

Yalor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a 
man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-gen- 
eralled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can 
only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension 
of truth ; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever 
quarter ; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his rela- 
tions to society, his Christianity, his world, may at any 
time be superseded and decease. 

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play 
with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. 
Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it 
may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. 
Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we 
see that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and 
practical. We learn that God is ; that he is in me ; and 
that all tilings are shadows of him. The idealism of 
Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of 
Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact, 
that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing 
and organizing itself. Much more obviously is history 
and the state of the world at any one time directly de- 
pendent on the intellectual classiflcation then existing in 
the minds of men. The things which are dear to menj- 



246 CIRCLES. 

at this liour are so on account of the ideas wliicli have 
emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the 
present order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new 
degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire 
system of human pursuits. 

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we 
pluck up the termini which bound the common of silence 
on every side. The parties are not to be judged by the 
spirit they partake and even express under this Pente- 
cost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high- 
water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping 
under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven 
flame whilst it glows on our walls. Wlien each new 
speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the op- 
pression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the great- 
ness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields 
us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, 
to become men. 0, what truths profound and executa- 
ble only in ages and orbs are supposed in the announce- 
ment of every truth ! In common hours, society sits 
cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, empty, — 
knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by 
mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose 
and trivial toys. ^ Then cometh the god, and converts the 
statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns up 
the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of 
the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock 
and tester, is manifest.* The facts which loomed so large 
in the fogs of yesterday — property, climate, breeding 
personal beauty, and the like — have strangely changed 
their proportions. All that we reckoned settled shakes 



CIRCLES. 247 

and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, 
leave their foundations, and dance before our eyes. And 
yet liere again see tlie swift circumspection ! Good as is 
discourse, silence is better, and shames it. ^The length 
of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt 
the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect 
understanding in any part, no words would be necessary 
thereon.^" If at one in all parts, no words would be suf- 
fered. 

Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, 
through which a new one may be described. The use of 
literature is to afford us a platform whence we may com- 
mand a view of our present life, a purchase by which we 
may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient learning, 
install ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in 
Roman houses, only that we may wuselier see French, 
English, and American houses and modes of living. In 
like manner, we see literature best from the midst of wild 
nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a higli religion. 
>r The field cannot be well seen from within the field.' The 
astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as 
a base to find the parallax of any star. 

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and 
all the wisdom is not in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise 
on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet 
or the play. In my daily work I incline to repeat my 
old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the 
power of change and reform. But some Petrarch or 
Ariosto, filled will the new wine of his imagination, writes 
me an ode or a brisk romance, full of daring thought and 
action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill tones. 



248 CIRCLES. 

breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eye on 
my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of all 
the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once 
more of choosing a straight path in theory and practise. 

We have the same need to command a view of the re- 
ligion of the world. We can never see Christianity from 
the catechism : — from the pastures, from a boat in the 
pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds, we possibly 
may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped 
in the sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we 
may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. 
Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind ; yet 
was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had 
fallen into the Christian church, by whom that brave text 
of Paul's was not specially prized : " Then shall also the 
Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, 
tliat God may be all in all." Let the claims and virtues 
of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of 
man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illim- 
itable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of 
bigots with this generous word out of the book itself. 

The natural world may be conceived of as a system of 
concentric circles, and we now and then detect in nature 
slight dislocations, which apprise us that this surface on 
which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. These 
manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegeta- 
tion, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there 
for their own sake, are means and methods only, — are 
words of God, and as fugitive as other words. Has the 
naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who lias explored 
the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who has 



CIECLES. 249 

not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a 
partial or approximate statement, namely, that like draws 
to like ; and that the goods which belong to you gravitate 
to you, and need not be pursued with pains and cost ? 
Yet is that statement approximate also, and not final. 
Omnipresence is a higher; fact. Not through subtle, sub- 
terranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to 
their counterpart, but, rightly considered, these things 
proceed from the eternal generation of the soul. Xause 
and effect are two sides of one fact. 

The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we 
call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a 
better. The great man wdll not be prudent in the popu- 
lar sense; all his prudence will be so much deduction 
from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when 
he sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it ; if to 
ease and pleasure, he had better be prudent still ; if to a 
great trust, he can well spare his mule and panniers who 
has a winged chariot instead. Geoffrey draws on his 
boots to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer 
from the bite of snakes ; Aaron never thinks of such a 
peril. In many years neither is harmed by such an acci- 
dent. Yet it seems to me, that, with every precaution 
you take against such an evil, you put yourself into the 
power of the evil. I suppose that the highest prudence 
is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing 
from the centre to the verge of our orbit ? Think how 
many times we shall fall back into pitiful calculations be- 
fore we take up our rest in the great sentiment, or make 
the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides, your brav- 
est sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The poor 
11* 



250 CIRCLES. 

and the low have tlieir way of expressing the last facts of 
philosophy as well as you. " Blessed be nothing/' and 
" the worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs 
which express the transcendentalism of common life. 

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's 
beauty, another's ugliness ; one man's wisdom, another's 
folly ; as one beholds the same objects from a higher 
point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, 
and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is 
very remiss in this duty, and makes the creditor wait 
tediously. But that second man has his own way of 
lookiug at things ; asks himself, Which debt must I pay 
first, — the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor ? the 
debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of 
genius to nature ? Eor you, broker ! there is no other 
principle but arithmetic. Eor me, commerce is of trivial 
import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of 
man, these are sacred ; nor can I detach one duty, like 
you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces 
mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live 
onward ; you shall find that, though slower, the progress 
of my character will liquidate all these debts without in- 
justice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate him- 
self to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice ? 
Does he owe no debt but money ? And are all claims on 
him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's r 

* There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The 
virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of 
reform is the discovery that we must cast away our vir- 
tues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the 
same pit that has consumed our grosser vices. > 



CIRCLES. 251 

" Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, 
Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.'* 

It is the highest power of divine moments that they 
abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth 
and unprofitableness day by day ; but when these waves 
of God flow into me, I no longer reckon lost time. I no 
longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what 
remains to me of the month or the year ; for these mo- 
ments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence 
which asks nothing of duration, but sees that the energy 
of the mind is commensurate witli the work to be done, 
without time. 

And tlms, circular philosopher, I hear some reader 
exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an 
equivalence and indlfferency of all actions, and would 
fain teach us that, if we are true, forsooth, our crimes 
may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the 
temple of the true God ! 

I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am glad- 
dened by seeing the predominance of the saccharine 
principle throughout vegetable nature, and not less by 
beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the 
principle of good into every chink and hole that selfish- 
ness has left open, yea, into selfishness and sin itself ; so 
that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme 
satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when I 
liave my own head and obey my whims, let me remind 
the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set 
the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on 
what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as 
true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me 



253 CIRCLES. 

sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an end- 
less seeker, with no Past at my back. 

Yet this incessant movement and progression which 
all things partake could never become sensible to us but 
by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability in 
the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles pro- 
ceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is 
somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge 
and thought, and contains all its circles. Eorever it 
labors to create a lite and thought as large and excellent 
as itself, suggesting to our thought a certain development, 
as if that which is made instructs how to make a better. 

Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but 
all things renew, germinate, and spring. Why should 
we import rags and relics into the new hour ? < Nature 
abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease ;' all 
others run iuto this one. We call it by many names, — 
fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity, and criuie; they 
are all forms of old age ; they are rest, conservatism, 
appropriation, inertia, not newness, not the way onward. 
We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we 
converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but 
grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with 
religious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing, and 
abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. 
But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, 
they have outlived their hope, tliey renounce aspiration, 
accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to 
the young. Let them, then, become organs of the Holy 
Ghost ; let them be lovers ; let them behold truth ; and 
their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are 



CIRCLES. 253 

perfumed again with hope and power. This old age 
ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every 
moment is new ; the past is always swallowed and for- 
gotten ; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure 
but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can 
be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a 
higher love. No truth so sublime but" it may be trivial 
to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. 'People wish to 
be settled ; only as far as they are unsettled is there any 
hope for them.-' 

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day 
the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when 
we are building up our being. Of lower states, — of 
acts of routine and sense, — we can tell somewhat ; but 
the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal 
movements of the soul, he hideth ; they are incalculable. 
I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it 
shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole 
inlet of so to know. The new position of the advancing 
man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new. 
It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is 
itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this 
new moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant 
and vain. Now, for the first time, seem I to know any- 
thing rightly. The simplest words, — we do not know 
what they mean, except when we love and aspire. 

The difference between talents and character is adroit- 
ness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and 
courage to make a new road to new and better goals. 
Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, 
determined hour, which fortifies all the company, by 



25i CIRCLES. 

making them see tliat much is possible and excellent that 
was not thought of. Character dulls the impression of 
particular events. When we see the conqueror, we do 
not think much of any one battle or success. We see 
that we had exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to 
him. The great man is not convulsible or tormentable ; 
events pass over him without much impression. People 
say sometimes, ' See what I have overcome ; see how 
cheerful I am ; see how completely I have triumphed 
over these black events.' Not if they still remind me 
of the black event. True conquest is the causing the 
calamity to fade and disappear, as an early cloud of 
insignificant result in a history so large and advanciug. 
The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is 
to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, 
to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something 
without knowing how or why ; in short, to draw a new 
circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without en- 
thusiasm. The way of life is wonderful ; it is by aban- 
donment. The great moments of history are the facil- 
ities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the 
works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver 
Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not 
whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use 
of opium and alcohol, are the semblance and counterfeit 
of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous at- 
traction for men. Eor the like reason, they ask the aid 
of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some 
manner these flames and generosities of the heart. 



INTELLECT. 



Go, speed the stars of Thought 
On to their shining goals ; — 
The sower scatters broad his seed. 
The wheat thou strew'st be souls. 



INTELLECT, 



Every substance is negatively electric to tliat wliicli 
stands above it in the cliernical tables, positively to that 
which stands below it. Water dissolves wood, and iron, 
and salt ; air dissolves water ; electric fire dissolves air, 
but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and 
the subtlest unnamed relations of nature, in its resistless 
menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which is intel- 
lect constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior 
to all action or construction. Gladly would I unfold in 
calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but what 
man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries 
of that transparent essence? The first questions are 
always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled 
by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can we speak 
of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its 
knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since 
it melts will into perception, knowledge into act ? Each 
becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not 
like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things 
known. 

Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear 
consideration of abstract truth. The considerations of 
time and place, of you and me, of profit and hurt, 

Q 



258 INTELLECT. 

tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates 
the fact considered from you, from all local and per- 
sonal reference, and discerns it as if it existed for its 
own sake. Heraclitus looked upon the aifections as 
dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and evil 
affections, it is hard for man to walk forward in a 
straight line. Intellect is void of affection, and sees an 
object as it stands in the light of science, cool and dis- 
engaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats 
over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and 
not as / and mine. He who is immersed in what con- 
cerns person or place cannot see the problem of exist- 
ence. This the intellect always ponders. Nature shows 
all things formed and bound. The intellect pierces the 
form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness be- 
tween remote things, and reduces all things into a few 
principles. 

The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. 
All that mass of mental and moral phenomena, which 
we do not make objects of voluntary thought, come 
within the power of fortune ; they constitute the circum- 
stance of daily life ; they are subject to cliange, to fear, 
and hope. Every man beholds his human condition 
with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is 
battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal 
life, lies open to the mercy of coming events. But a 
truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a subject 
of destiny. We behold it as a god upraised above care 
and fear. And so any fact in our life, or any record of 
our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the web of 
our unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and 



INTELLECT. 259 

immortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. A 
better art than that of Egypt has taken fear and cor- 
ruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. It is of- 
fered for science. What is addressed to us for contem- 
plation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual 
beings. 

Tlie growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every 
expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the 
times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God 
enters by a private door into every individual. Long 
prior to the so-called age of reflection is the thinking of 
the*' mind. Out of darkness, it came insensibly into the 
marvellous light of to-day. In the period of infancy it 
accepted and disposed of all impressions from the sur- 
rounding creation after its own way. Whatever any 
mind doth or saith is after a law ; and this native law 
remains over it after it has come to reflection or conscious 
thought. In the most worn, pedantic, introverted self- 
tormentor's life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, 
unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take 
himself up by his own ears. What am I? What has 
my will done to make me that I am ? Nothing. I have 
been floated into this thought, this hour, this connec- 
tion of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and 
my ingenuity and wilfulness have not thwarted, have 
not aided to an appreciable degree. 

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You can- 
not, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close 
to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring 
you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad in 
the morning after meditating the matter before sleep on 



260 INTELLECT. 

the previous night. Our thinking is a pious reception. 
Our truth of thought is tlierefore vitiated as much by too 
violent direction given bj our will, as by too great negli- 
gence. We do not determine what we will think. We . 
only open our senses, clear away, as we can, all obstruc- 
tion from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have 
little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners 
of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their 
lieaven, and so fully engage us that we take no heed 
for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to 
make them our own. By and by vre fall out of that 
rapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have 
seen, and repeat, as truly as we can, what we have be- 
held. As far as we can recall these ecstasies, we carry 
away in the ineffaceable memory the result, aud all men 
and all the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But 
the moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct 
and contrive, it is not Truth. 

If we consider what persons have stimulated and prof- 
ited us, we shrdl perceive the superiority of the sponta- 
neous or intuitive principle over the arithmetical or logi- 
cal. The first contains the second, but virtual and latent. 
We want, in every man, a long logic ; we cannot pardon 
the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is 
the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intui- 
tion ; but its virtue is as silent method ; the moment it 
would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, 
it is worthless. 

In every man's mind, some images, words, and facts 
remain, without effort on his part to imprint them, which 
others forget, and afterwards these illustrate to him im- 



INTELLECT. 261 

portant laws. All our progress is an unfolding, like the 
vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opin- 
ion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and ' 
fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can? 
render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it 
to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know 
why you believe. 

Each mind has its own method. A true man never 
acquires after college rules. What you have aggregated 
in a natural manner surprises and delights when it is 
produced. Eor we cannot oversee each other's secret. 
Aud hence the differences between men in natural endow- 
ment are insignificant in comparison with their common 
wealth. Do you think the porter and the cook have no 
anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you? Every- 
body knows as much as the savant. The walls of rude 
minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. 
They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscrip- 
tions. Every man, in the degree in which he has wit and 
culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes 
of living and thinking of other men, and especially of 
those classes whose minds have not been subdued by the 
drill of school education. 

This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, 
but becomes richer and more frequent in its informations 
through all states of culture. At last comes the era of 
reflection, when we not only observe, but take pains to 
observe ; when we of set purpose sit down to consider 
an abstract truth ; when we keep the mind's eye open, 
whilst we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent 
to learn the secret law of some class of facts. 



262 INTELLECT. 

What is the hardest task in tlie world ? To think. I 
would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an 
-abstract truth, and I cannot. 1 blench and withdraw on 
this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant 
who said. No man can see God face to face and live. 
Por example, a man explores the basis of civil govern- 
ment. Let him intend his mind without respite, without 
rest, in one direction. His best heed long time avails 
him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before hiin. We 
all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We 
say, I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and 
clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find it. It 
seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed 
attitude of the library to seize the thought. Eut we 
come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a 
moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain 
wandering light glimmers, and is the distinction, the prin- 
ciple, we wanted. ^Eut the oracle comes, because we had 
previously laid siege to the shrine.*' It seems as if the 
law of the intellect resembled that law of nature by which 
we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the 
lieart now draws in, then hurls out the blood, — the law 
of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains, 
and now you must forbear your activity, and see what 
the great Soul showeth. 

The immortality of man is as legitimately preached 
from the intellections as from the moral volitions. Every 
intellection is mainly prospective. Its present value is 
its least. Inspect what delights you in Plutarch, in 
Shakspeare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer 
acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts 



INTELLIICT. 263 

and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the 
mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become 
precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography 
becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits tiie 
day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. 
Men say, Where did he get this? and think there was 
something divine in his life. But no ; they have myriads 
of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp to ran- 
sack their attics withal. 

We are all wise. The difference between persons is- 
not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, 
a person who always deferred to me, who, seeing my 
whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had some- 
what superior ; whilst 1 saw that his experiences were as 
good as mine. Give them to me, and I would make tlie 
same use of them. He held the old; he holds the 
new ; 1 had the habit of tacking together the old and 
the new, which he did not use to exercise. This may hold 
in the great examples. Perhaps if we should meet 
Shakspeare, we should not be conscious of any steep 
inferiority; no: but of a great equality, — only that he 
possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, his facts, 
which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter inca- 
pacity to produce anything like Hamlet and Othello, see 
the perfect reception this wit, and immense knowledge of 
life, and liquid eloquence find in us all. 

If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or 
hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and shut your 
eyes, and press your eyes with your hand, you shall still 
see apples hanging in the bright light, with boughs and- 
leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn-flags, 



264 INTELLECT. 

and this for five or six hours afterwards. There lie the 
impressions on the retentive organ, though you knew it 
not. So lies the whole series of natural images with 
which your life has made you acquainted in your memory, 
though you know it not, and a thrill of passion flashes 
light on their dark chamber, and the active power seizes 
instantly the fit image, as the word of its momentary 
thought. 

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our his- 
tory, we are sure, is quite tame : we have nothing to 
write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run 
back to the despised recollections of childhood, and al- 
ways we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that 
pond ; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the bi- 
ography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, 
nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hun- 
dred volumes of the Universal History. 

In the intellect constructive, which we popularly des- 
ignate by the word Genius, we observe the same balance 
of two elements as in intellect receptive. The con- 
structive intellect produces thoughts, sentences, poems, 
plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, 
the marriage of thought with nature. To genius must 
always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. 
The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no fre- 
quency of occurrence or incessant study can ever famil- 
iarize, but which must always leave the inquirer stupid 
with wonder. It is the advent of truth into the world, 
a form of tliought now, for the first time, bursting into 
the universe, a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of 
genuine and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the 



INTELLECT. 265 

time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to dictate to 
the unborn. It affects every thought of man, and goes 
to fashion every institution. But to make it available, it 
needs a vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. 
To be communicable, it must become picture or sensible 
object. We must learn the language of facts. The most 
wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has 
no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray of light 
passes invisible through space, and only when it falls ou 
an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is di- 
rected on something outward, then it is a thought. The 
relation between it and you first makes you, the value of 
you, apparent to me. The rich, inventive genius of the 
painter must be smothered and lost for want of the power 
of drawing, and in our happy hours we should be in- 
exhaustible poets, if once we could break through the 
silence into adipquate rhyme. As all men have some 
access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of 
communication in tlieir head, but only in the artist does 
it descend into the hand. There is an inequality, whose 
laws we do not yet know, between two men and between 
two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. 
In common hours we have the same facts as in the un- 
common or inspired, but they do not sit for their por- 
traits ; they are not detached, but lie in a web. The 
thought of genius is spontaneous ; but the power of pic- 
ture or expression, in the most enriched and flowing 
nature, implies a mixture of will, a certain control over 
the spontaneous states, without which no production is 
possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the rhet- 
oric of thought, under the eye of judgment, with a stren- 

" VOL. 1. ^ 12 



266 INTELLECT. 

uous exercise of choice. And 3^et the imaginative vocab- 
ulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not flow 
from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. 
Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms are 
the grand strokes of the painter executed, but by repair- 
ing to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. "V^^ho 
••is the first drawing-master ? Without instruction we 
know very well the ideal of the human form. A child 
knows if an arm or a leg be distorted in a picture, if the 
attitude be natural, or grand, or mean, though he has 
never received any instruction in drawing, or heard any 
conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw cor- 
rectly a shigle feature. A good form strikes all eyes 
pleasantly, long before they have any science on the sub- 
ject ; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpita- 
tion, prior to all consideration of the mechanical propor- 
tions of the features and head. We may owe to drcauis 
some light on the fountain of this skill ; for, as soon as 
we let our will go, and let the unconscious states ensue, 
see what cunning draughtsmen we are 1 We entertain 
ourselves with wonderful forms of men, of women, of 
animals, of gardens, of woods, and of monsters, and the 
-mystic pencil wherewith we then draw has no awkward- 
ness or inexperience, no meagreness or poverty ; it can 
design well, and group well; its composition is full of art, 
its colors are well laid on, and the whole canvas which it 
paints is lifelike, and apt to touch us with terror, with 
tenderness, witli desire, and with grief. Neither are the 
artist's co])ics from experience ever mere co])ies, but 
always touched and softened by tints from this ideal 
domain. 



INTELLECT. 267 

The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not 
appear to be so often combined but tliat a good sentence 
or verse remains fresh and memorable for a long time. 
Yet when we write with ease, and come out into the free 
air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is 
easier than to continue this communication at pleasure. 
Up, down, around, the kingdom of thought has no en- 
closures, but the Muse makes us free of her city. Well, \^ 
the world has a million writers. One would think, then, ^ 
that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, 
.and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. 
Yet we can count all our good books ; nay, I remember 
any beautiful verse for twenty years. It is true that the 
discerning intellect of the world is always much in ad- 
vance of the creative, so tliat there are many competent 
judges of the best book, and few writers of the best 
books. But some of the conditions of intellectual con- 
struction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a 
whole, and demands integrity in every work. This is 
resisted equally by a man's devotion to a single thought, 
-and by his ambition to combine too many. 

Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his 
attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself ^f 
to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted . ^ 
and not itself, but falsehood ; herein resembling the air, i ^^^ 
which is our natural element, and the breath of our| \^ 
nostrils, but if a stream of the same be directed on the ^ya^ 
body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. ^ 
How wearisome tlie grammarian, the phrenologist, the 
political or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed 
mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a 



268 INTELLECT. 

single topic. It is incipient insanity. Every thoiiglit is 
a prison also. I cannot see wliat you see, because 1 am 
caught up by a strong wind, and blown so far in one 
direction that I am out of the hoop of your horizon. 

Is it any better, if the student, to avoid this oflence, 
and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical 
whole of history, or science, or philosophy, by a numeri- 
cal addition of all the facts that fall within his vision ? 
The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and sub- 
traction. When we are young, we spend much time and 
pains in filling our note-books Avith all definitions of Re- 
ligion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in 
the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into 
our encyclopedia the net value of all the theories at 
which the world has yet arrived. But year after year 
our tables get no conipleteness, and at last we discover 
that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet. 

Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is the 
integrity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by 
a vigilance which brings the intellect in its greatness and 
best state to operate every moment. It must liave the 
same wholeness which nature has. Although no dili- 
gence can rebuild the universe in a model, by the best 
accumulation or disposition of details, yet does the world 
reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the laws 
of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The intel- 
lect must have the like perfection in its apprehension 
and in its works. Por this reason, an index or mercury 
of intellectual proficiency is the perception of identity. 
We talk with accomplished persons who appear to be 
strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the 



INTELLECT. 269 

bird, are not theirs, have nothing of them : the world is 
only tlieir lodging and table. But the poet, whose verses 
are to be spheral and complete, is one whom Nature can- 
not deceive, whatsoever face of strangeness she may put 
on. He feels a strict consanguinity, and detects more 
likeness than variety in all her changes. "We are stung 
by the desire for new thought ; but when we receive a 
new tliought, it is only the old thought with a new face, 
and though we make it our own, we instantly crave 
another; we are not really enriched. For the. truth was 
in us before it w^as reflected to us from natural objects ; 
and the profound genius will cast the likeness of all 
creatures into every product of his wit.*"' 

But if the constructive powers are rare, and it is given 
to few men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of 
this descending holy ghost, and may well study the laws 
of its influx. Exactly parallel is the whole rule of intel- 
lectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no 
less austere than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. 
-/He must worship truth, and forego all things for that, 
and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought 
is thereby augmented.^ 

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and 
repose. Take which you please, — you can never have 
both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. 
He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept 
the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political 
party he meets, — most likely his father's. He gets 
rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door 
of truth. He in whom tlie love of truth predominates 
will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He 



r 



270 INTELLECT. 

will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all tlie oppo- 
site negations, between whicli, as walls, his being is 
swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense 
and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, 
as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his 
being. 

The circle of the green earth he must measure with his 
shoes, to find the man who can yield him truth. He 
shall then know that there is somewhat more blessed and 
great in hearing than in speaking. Happy is the hearing 
man; unhappy the speaking man. As long as I hear 
truth, I am bathed by a beautiful element, and am not 
conscious of any limits to my nature. The suggestions 
are thousand-fold that I hear and see. The waters of 
the great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But 
if I speak, I define, I confine, and am less. When Soc- 
rates speaks. Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no 
shame that they do not speak. They also are good. He 
likewise defers to them, loves them whilst he speaks. 
Because a true and natural man contains and is the same 
truth which an eloquent man articulates : but in the elo- 
quent man, because he can articulate it, it seems some- 
thing the less to reside, and he turns to these silent beau- 
tiful with the more inclination and respect. The ancient 
sentence said, "Let us be silent, for so are the gods." 
Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives 
us leave to be great and universal. Every man's prog- 
ress is through a succession of teachers, each of whom 
seems at the time to have a superlative influence, but it at 
last gives place to a new. Erankly let him accept it all. 
Jesus says, Leave father, mother, house, and lands, and 



INTELLECT. 271 

follow me. Who leaves all, receives more. This is as 
true intellectually as morally. Each new mind we ap- 
proach seems to require an abdication of all our past and 
present possessions. A new doctrine seems, at first, a 
subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and manner of liv- 
ing. Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such has 
Coleridge, such has Hegel or his interpreter Cousin, 
seemed to many young men in this country. Take 
thankfully and heartily all they can give. Exhaust them, 
wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be 
won, and, after a short season, the dismay will be over- 
past, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be 
no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright star 
shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light 
with all your day. 

'^But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that 
which draws him, because that is his own, he is to refuse 
himself to that which draws him not, whatsoever fame 
and authority may attend it, because it is not his own."" 
Entire self-reliance belongs to the intellect. One soul is 
a counterpoise of all souls, as a capillary column of water 
is a balance for the sea. It must treat things, and books, 
and sovereign genius, as itself also a sovereign. If 
^schylus be that man he is taken for, he has not yet 
done his office, when he has educated the learned of 
Europe for a thousand years. He is now to approve 
himself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot do 
that, all his fame shall avail him nothing with me. I 
were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand ^Eschyluses to my 
intellectual integrity. Especially take the same ground 
in regard to abstract truth, the science of the mind. The 



272 INTELLECT. 

Bacon, the Spinoza, tlie Hume, Sclielling, Kant, or wlio- 
soever propounds to you a pliilosopliy of the mind, is 
only a more or less awkward translator of things hi your 
consciousness, which you have also your way of seehig, 
perhaps of denominating. Say, then, instead of too tim- 
idly poring into his obscure sense, that he has not suc- 
ceeded in rendering back to you your consciousness. He 
has not succeeded ; now let another try. If Plato can- 
not, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then per- 
haps Kant. Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will 
find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, common 
state, which the writer restores to you. 

But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the 
subject might provoke it, speak to the open question 
between Truth and Love. I shall not presume to inter- 
fere in the old politics of the skies ; — " The cherubim 
know most; the serapliim love most." The gods shall 
settle their own quarrels. But I cannot recite, even 
thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering 
that lofty and sequestered class who have been its 
prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure 
reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles 
of thought from age to age. When, at long intervals, 
we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the 
calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual 
lords, who have walked in the world, — these of the old 
religion, — dwelling in a worship which makes the sanc- 
tities of Christianity look parvenues and popular; for 
" persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect." This 
band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, 
Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, and the rest. 



INTELLECT. 273 

liave somewliat so vast in their logic, so primary in tlieir 
thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary 
distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once 
poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and 
mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed 
of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul 
lays the foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur 
of their thought is proved by its scope and applicabiUty, 
for it commands the entire schedule and inventory ot 
things for its illustration. But what marks its elevation, 
and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity 
with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, 
and from age to age prattle to each other, and to no con- 
temporary. Well assured that their speech is intelligible, 
and the most natural thing in the world, they add thesis 
to thesis, without a moment's heed of the universal 
astonishment of the human race below, who do not com- 
prehend their plainest argument ; nor do they ever relent 
so much as to insert a popular or explaining sentence ; 
nor testify the least displeasure or petulance at the 
dulness of their amazed auditory. /The angels are so 
enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that 
they will not distort their lips with the hissing and un- 
musical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether 
there be any who understand it or not.*^ 



12* 



AET. 



Give to barrows, trays, and pans 

Grace and glimmer of romance; 

Bring the moonlight into noon 

Hid in gleaming piles of stone ; 

On the city's paved street 

Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet ; 

Let spouting fountains cool the air. 

Singing in the sun-baked square ; 

Let statue, picture, park, and hall. 

Ballad, flag, and festival. 

The past restore, the day adorn. 

And make each morrow a new morn. 

So shall the drudge in dusty frock 

Spy behind the city clock 

Retinues of airy kings, 

Skirts of angels, starry wings, 

His fathers shining in bright fables. 

His children fed at heavenly tables. 

'T is the privilege of Art 

Thus to play its cheerful part, 

Man in Earth to acclimate. 

And bend the exile to his fate, 

And, moulded of one element 

With the days and firmament. 

Teach him on these as stairs to climb, 

And live on even terms with Time ; 

"Whilst upper life the slender rill 

Of human sense doth overfill. 



AET. 



Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats 
itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new 
and fairer whole. This appears in works both of the use- 
ful and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction 
of works according to their aim either at use or beauty. 
Thus in our fine arts, not imitation, but creation, is the 
aim. In landscapes, the painter should give the sugges- 
tion of a fairer creation than we know. The details, the 
prose of nature he should omit, and give us only the spirit 
and splendor. He should know that the landscape has 
beauty for his eye, because it expresses a thought which is 
to him good: and tliis, because the same power which sees 
through his eyes is seen in that spectacle ; and he will 
come to value the expression of nature, and not nature 
itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please 
him. He will give the gloom of gloom, and the sunshine 
of sunshine. In a portrait, he must inscribe the charac- 
ter, and not the features, and must esteem the man who 
sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or like- 
ness of the aspiring original within. 

What is that abridgment and selection we observe in 
all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse ? for 
it is the inlet of that highe'r illumination which teaches to 



278 ART. 

convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a 
man but nature's finer success in self-explication ? What 
is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than the 
horizon figures, — nature's eclecticism ? and what is his 
speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but a still 
finer success ? all the weary miles and tons of space and 
bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted 
into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the 
pencil? 

Eut the artist must employ the symbols in use in his 
day and nation, to convey his enlarged sense to his fel- 
low-men. Thus the new in art is always formed out of 
the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his ineff*aceable 
seal on the work, and gives it an inexpressible charm for 
the imagination. As far as the spiritual character of. the 
period overpowers the artist, and finds expression in his 
work, so far it will retain a certain grandeur, and will 
represent to future beholders the Unknown, the Inevita- 
*ble, the Divine. No man can quite exclude this element 
of Necessity from his labor. No man can quite emanci- 
pate himself from his age and country, or produce a 
model in which the education, the religion, the politics, 
usages, and arts of his times shall have no share. 
Though he were never so original, never so wilful and 
fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of 
the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoidance 
betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will, and out of 
his sight, he is necessitated, by the air he breathes, and 
the idea on which he and his contemporaries live and 
toil, to share the manner of his times, without knowing 
what that manner is. Now that wdiich is inevitable in 



.ART. 279 

the work lias a higher cliarin than individual talent can 
ever give, iuasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems 
to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to 
inscribe a line in the history of the human race. This 
circumstance gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyph- 
ics, to the Indian, Chinese, and Mexican idols, how- 
ever gross and shapeless. They denote the height of the 
human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but 
sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. Shall I 
now add, that the whole extant product of the plastic 
arts has herein its highest value, as history ; as a stroke 
drawn in the portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, 
according to whose ordinations all beings advance to 
their beatitude ? 

Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art 
to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed 
in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, 
by the exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the 
dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what 
is carved and painted, as students of the mystery of 
Eorm. The virtue of art lies in detachment, in seques- 
tering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until 
one thing comes out from the connection of thnigs, there 
can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. Our 
happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. The in- 
fant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individual charac- 
ter and his practical power depend on his daily progress 
in the separation of things, and dealing with one at a 
time. Love and all the passions concentrate all existence 
around a single form. It is the habit of certain minds to 
give an all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought. 



280 ART. 

the word, tliey alight upon, and to make that for the 
time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, the 
orators, the leaders of society. The power to detach, 
and to magnify by detaching, is the essence of rhetoric 
in the hands of the orator and the poet. This rhetoric, or 
power to fix the momentary eminency of an object, — so 
remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle, — the painter 
and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The power 
depends on the depth of the artist's insight of that object 
he contemplates. Eor every object has its roots in central 
nature, and may of course be so exhibited to us as to 
represent the world. Therefore, each work of genius is 
the tyrant of the hour, and concentrates attention on it- 
self. Eor the time, it is the only thing worth naming to 
do that, — be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, 
an oration, the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a 
voyage of discovery. Presently we pass to some other 
object, which rounds itself into a whole, as did the first; 
for example, a well-laid garden : and nothing seems worth 
doing but the laying out of gardens. I should tliink fire 
the best thing in the world, if I were not acquainted 
with air, and water, and earth. Eor it is the right and 
property of all natural objects, of all genuine talents, or 
all native properties whatsoever, to be for their moment 
the top of the world. A squirrel leaping from bough to 
bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for his 
pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion, — is beautiful, 
self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature. A 
good ballad draws my ear and heart wliilst I listen, as 
much as an epic has done before. A dog, drawn by a 
master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality not 



AET. 281 

less than the frescos of Angelo. From tliis succession 
of excellent objects, we learn at last the immensity of the 
world, the opulence of human nature, which can run out 
to infinitude in any direction. But I also learn that what 
astonished and fascinated me in the first work astonished 
me in the second work also ; that excellence of all things 
is one. 

The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely 
initial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last 
secret. Tlie best pictures are rude draughts of a few of 
the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up 
the ever-clianging " landscape with figures " amidst which 
we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing 
is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to 
self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the 
dancing-master are better forgotten ; so painting teaches 
me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and, 
as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, 
I see the boundbss opulence of the pencil, the indifPer- 
ency in wliich the artist stands free to choose out of the 
possible forms. If he can draw everything, why draw 
anything? and tlien is my eye opened to the eternal pic- 
ture which nature paints in the street with moving men 
and children, beggars, and fine ladies, draped in red, 
and green, and blue, and gray ; long-haired, grizzled, 
white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, 
elfish, — capped and based by heaven, earth, and sea. 

A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same 
lesson. As picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the 
anatomy of form. When I have seen fine statues, and 
afterwards enter a public assembly, I understand well 



282 ART. 

what lie meant who said, " When I Lave been reading 
Homer, all men look like giants." I too see iliat paint- 
ing and scnlpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training 
to the niceties and curiosities of its function. There is 
no statue like tliis living man, with his inlinite advan- 
tage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. Wliat 
a gallery of art Lave 1 Lere ! No mannerist made tLese 
varied groups and diverse original single figures. Here 
is tlie artist Limself improvising, grim and glad, at Lis 
block. Now one tliougLt strikes him, now another, and 
with each moment he alters the wLole air, attitude, and 
expression of Lis clay. Away witL your nonsense of oil 
and easels, of marble and cLisels : except to open your 
eyes to tLe masteries of eternal art, tliey are Lypo- 
critical rubbisL. 

- TLe refei-ence of all production at last to an aboriginal 
power explains tLe traits common to all works of tLe 
liigLest art, — tliat tLey are universally intelligible ; tLat 
tliey restore to us tLe simplest states of mind; and are 
religious. Since wLat skill is tlierein sLown is tlie 
reappearance of tLe original soul, a jet of pure liglit, it 
sLould produce a similar impression to tLat made by 
natural objects. In Lappy Lours, nature appears to us 
pne witL art ; art perfected, — tLe work of genius. And 
tLe individual, in wLom simple tastes and susceptibility 
to all tLe great Luman influences overpower tLe acci- 
dents of a local and special culture, is tlie best critic 
of art. Tliougli we travel tLe world over to find tlie 
^'^ beautiful, we must carry it witL us, or we find it not. 
^ TLe best of beauty is a finer cLarm tliaii skill in surfaces, 
I in outlines, or rules of art can ever teacL, namely, a 



• ART. 283 

radiation from the work of art of human character, — a 
wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musi- 
cal sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our 
nature, and tlierefore most intelligible at last to those 
souls which have these attributes. In the sculptures of 
the Greeks, in the masonry of the Romans, and in the 
pictures of the Tuscan and Yenetian masters, the high- 
est charm is the universal language they speak. A con- 
fession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes 
from them all. That which we carry to them, the same 
we bring back more fairly illustrated in the memory. 
The traveller who visits the Yatican, and passes from 
chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, 
sarcophagi, and candelabra, through all forms of beauty, 
cut in the richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the 
simplicity of the principles out of which they all sprung, 
and that they liad their origin from thoughts and laws 
in his own breast. He studies the technical rules on 
these wonderful remains, but forgets that these works 
were not always thus constellated; that they are the 
contributions of many ages and many countries; that 
each came out of the solitary workshop of one artist, 
who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the existence of other 
sculpture, created his work without other model, save 
life, household life, and the sweet and smart of personal 
relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes, of poverty, 
and necessity, and hope, and fear. These were his in- 
spirations, and these are the effects he carries home to 
your heart and mind. In proportion to his force, the 
artist will hnd in his work an outlet for his proper 
character., . lie. must not be in any manner pinched or 



-"^>^ / 



/ 



284 ART. 

hindered by liis material, but through his necessity of 
imparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, 
and will allow an adequate communication of himself, in 
his. iull stature and proportion. He need not cumber 
himself with a conventional nature and culture, nor ask 
what ik the mode in Rome or in Paris, but that house, 
and weather, and manner of living which poverty and the 
fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear, 
in the gray, unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a 
New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the back- 
woods, or in the narrow lodging w^here he has endured 
the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve 
as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought 
which pours itself indifferently through all. 

I remember, when in my younger days I had heard of 
the wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great 
pictures would be great strangers ; some surprising com- 
bination of color and form ; a foreign wonder, barbaric 
pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of the 
militia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imagi- 
nations of school-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew 
not what. When I came at last to Rome, and saw with 
eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the 
gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced 
directly to the simple and true ; that it was familiar and 
sincere ; that it was the old, eternal fact I had met al- 
ready in so many forms, — unto which I lived ; that it was 
the plain 2/ou and me I knew so well, — had left at home 
in so many conversations. I had had the same experi- 
ence already in a church at Naples. There I saw that noth- 
ing was changed with me but the place, and said to myself, 



ART. 285 

'Thou foolisli cliild, hast thou come out hither, over four 
thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was per- 
fect to thee there at home ? ' — that fact I saw again in 
the Acadeinmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture, 
and yet again when I came to Rome, and to the paintings 
of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da 
Vinci. " What, old mole ! workest thou in the earth so 
fast?" It had travelled by my side: that which I fan- 
cied I had left in Boston was here in the Yatican, and 
again at Milan, and at Paris, and made all travelling 
ridiculous as a treadmill. I now require this of all pic- 
tures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle 
me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing 
astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain deal- 
ing.^ All great actions have been simple, and all great 
pictures are. 

The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent exam- 
ple of this peculiar merit. A calm, benignant beauty 
shines over all this picture, and goes directly to the 
heart. It seems almost to call you by name. The sweet 
and sublime face of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it 
disappoints all florid expectations ! This familiar, sim- 
ple, home-speaking countenance is as if one should meet 
a friend. The knowledge of picture-dealers has its value, 
but listen not to their criticism when your heart is 
touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it was 
painted for you ; for such as had eyes capable of being 
touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. 

Yet when we have said all our fine things about the 
arts, we must end with a frank confession, that the arts, 
as we know them, are but initial. Our best praise is 



286 AUT. 

given to what they aimed and promised, not to the actual 
result. He has conceived meanly of the resources of 
man, who believes that the best age of production is past. 
The real value of the Iliad, or the Transfiguration, is as 
signs of power ; billows or ripples they are of the stream 
of tendency ; tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, 
which even in its worst estate the soul betrays. Art has 
not yet come to its maturity, if it do not put itself abreast 
with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not 
practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection witli 
the conscience, if it do not make the poor and unculti- 
vated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty 
cheer. There is higher work for Art than the arts. They 
are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. 
Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense 
and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or 
tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as 
all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the crea- 
tion of man and nature is its end. A man should find in 
it an outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and 
carve only as long as he can do that. Art should exhil- 
arate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every 
side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of uni- 
versal relation and power which the work evinced in the 
artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists. 

Already History is old enough to witness the old age 
and disappearance of particular arts. The art of sculp- 
ture has long ago perished to any real effect. It was origi- 
nally a useful art, a mode of writing, a savage's record of 
gratitude or devotion, and among a people possessed of a 
wonderful perception of form this childish carving was 



AUT. 287 

refined to the utmost splendor of effect. But it is the 
game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly 
labor of a wise and spiritual nation. Under an oak-tree 
loaded with leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal 
eyes, I stand in a thoroughfare ; but in the works of our 
phistic arts, and especially of sculpture, creation is driven 
into a corner. I cannot hide from myself that there is 
a certain appearance of paltriness, as of toys, and the 
trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. Nature transcends 
all our moods of thought, and Jts secret we do not. yet 
find. But the gallery stands at the mercy of our moodsj 
and there is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do 
not wonder that Newton, with an attention habitually 
jcngaged on the paths of planets and suns, should have 
wondered what the Earl of Pembroke found to admire in 
''stone dolls." Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil 
how deep is the secret of form, how purely the spirit. can 
translate its meanings into that eloquent dialect. But 
tlie statue will look cold and false before that new activity 
which needs to roll through all things, and is impatient 
of counterfeits, and things not alive. Picture and sculp- 
ture are the celebrations and festivities of form. But true 
art is never fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest 
music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when 
it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, trutli, 
or courage. The oratorio has already lost its relation to 
:the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuad- 
ing voice is in tune witli these. All works of art should 
not be detached, but extempore performances. A great 
man is a new statue in every attitude and action. A 
beautiful woman is a picture which drives all . beholders 



288 AET. 

nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem 
or a romance. 

A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man 
were found worthy to declare it, would carry art up into 
the kingdom of nature, and destroy its separate and con- 
trasted existence. The fountains of invention and beauty 
in modern society are all but dried up. A popular novel, 
a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are all 
paupers in the almshouse of this world, without dignity, 
without skill, or industry. Art is as poor and low. The 
old tragic Necessity, which lowers on the brows even of 
the Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, and furnishes 
the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous 
figures into nature, — namely, that they were inevitable ; 
that the artist w^as drunk with a passion for form which 
he could not resist, and v/hich vented itself in these fine 
extravagances, — no longer dignifies the chisel or the 
pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in 
art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the 
evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the figure 
they make in their own imaginations, and they flee to art, 
and convey their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or 
a picture. Art makes the same effort which a sensual 
prosperity makes ; namely, to detach the beautiful from 
the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating 
it, pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and compensa- 
tions, this division of beauty from use, the laws of nature 
do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought, not from 
religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. 
High beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or 
in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction ; an effenii- 



ART. 289 

nate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all 
that can be formed ; for the hand can never execute any- 
thing higher than the character can inspire. 

The art that thus separates is itself first separated. 
Art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin 
further back in man. Now men do not see nature to 
l)e beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall 
be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and incon- 
vertible, and console themselves with color-bags, and 
blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create 
a death which they call poetic. They despatch the day's 
weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat 
and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. 
Thus is art vihfied ; the name conveys to the mind its 
secondary and bad senses ; it stands in the imagination 
as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death 
from the first. ^Would it not be better to begin higher 
up, — to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to 
serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the 
breath, and in the functions of life ? ^ Beauty must come 
back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the 
fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were 
truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer 
easy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. 
In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore 
beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it 
is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. 
Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will 
it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. 
It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up 
between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain 

VOL. I. 13 * S 



290 Anr. 

that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old 
arts ; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new 
and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop 
and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise 
to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the 
joint-stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, 
Dur commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the 
prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we seek now 
only an economical use. Is not the selfish and even 
cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical 
works — to mills, railways, and machinery — the effect 
of the mercenary impulses which these works obey ? 
When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat 
bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, 
and arriving at its ports witli the punctuality of a planet, 
is a step of man into harmony with nature. 'The boat at 
St. Petersburg, which plies along the Lena by magnet- 
ism, needs little to make it sublime. M^hen science is 
learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they 
will appear the supplements and continuations of the 
material creation./ 



THE END. 



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